Indiana releases final draft of proposed academic standards

The final draft is the product of a months-long process, jumpstarted by the Indiana General Assembly pausing the implementation of the national Common Core State Standards in 2013 and Gov. Mike Pence signing legislation to officially remove the state from the national standards in March.

Education officials say the standards for K-12 mathematics and English/language arts education reflect the same body of knowledge Hoosier students currently learn and will not lead to a huge transition for teachers and students. But the standards will prompt students to apply their skills.

Click here to download file folder of proposed Indiana academic standards

“They will be able to apply those skills to a higher level of rigor…this is rather than just a reiteration of ‘I learned this.’ This is ‘I can apply this skill. I can be persuasive in my knowledge and communication around this skill,’” said Danielle Shockey, deputy superintendent of public instruction.

The standards will first go to Indiana’s Education Roundtable, chaired by Pence and Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, on Monday. The roundtable – where final modifications could be made -- will make a recommendation on the standards to the Indiana State Board of Education. The state board is set to take a final vote April 28.

With Indiana becoming the first state to leave Common Core, questions have swirled on how much the new standards will reflect the national standards the state adopted in 2010 under former Gov. Mitch Daniels and then Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett.

Leaders of the process have maintained the proposed Indiana standards represent the culmination of the best standards available, including current and past state standards, Common Core and other national benchmarks. The state has not done an analysis on how much the final draft reflects Common Core. Rather than comparisons, Claire Fiddian-Green, co-leader of the Pence-created Center for Education and Career Innovation, said focus has been on developing standards that were the “best of the best.”

The state circulated an earlier draft to national evaluators, and in some cases, received criticism for similarities to Common Core. A panel responsible for reviewing the final draft included some of the changes proposed by the national evaluators prior to Tuesday’s public release. The final draft is a “pretty substantially different document” from earlier drafts because of feedback from national evaluators and the panel made up of educators and career experts, Fiddian-Green said.

One of the national evaluators said an earlier draft of English/language arts standards for grades K-5 was an “utter disappointment” and that an issue with academic standards across the country is that they are written in “edu-speak” so parents can’t understand.

Terrence O. Moore, of Hillsdale College, said the new draft standards are “simply the Common Core; in many cases simply cut-and-pasted, in others slightly rewritten.”

“This derivative quality must be known since the whole country right now imagines that Indiana educators are writing ‘Hoosier standards’ for Hoosier students,” Moore wrote.

Evaluators from Achieve, a non-profit education reform organization, said while the English/language arts standards mirror the format and progression of Common Core, it’s clear a review process took place.

“The state appears to have clearly examined each statement they have included in this draft, keeping, changing, adding and revising standards as they try to capture the clearest and highest expectations for the students of Indiana,” according to Achieve.

The state received more than 2,000 public comments on the first draft that was publicly released in February, with the majority coming from Hoosier educators. The same level of public comment was not solicited for later drafts. Historically, public feedback is gathered early in the process, state officials said.

Public comments submitted and released by the state from Vanderburgh County educators were varied. One Vanderburgh County elementary teacher wrote Common Core seemed to be more specific, with another teacher saying the draft standards were easier to read and comprehend.

Educators will use the standards to develop curriculum and lesson plans. Curriculum aligning to the new standards is critical because students will begin taking a standardized test based off the new standards in spring 2016. Those test scores factor into A-F school accountability grades and teacher evaluations.

Central to the mission of the multiple panels created by the state to develop and review the standards was to ensure the end product prepared students to attend college or enter the workforce. That focus on “college and career readiness” is necessary for the state to continue meeting federal standards.

Pence said Tuesday that the process was focused on students and that Indiana – as the first state to withdraw from Common Core – had a “unique responsibility” to create the new standards.

“Because of the hard work of our educators and parents, Indiana is leading the way on state academic standards that will challenge our students, guide our teachers, and give parents the confidence that our Indiana standards reflect the high expectations Hoosiers have for all our schools,” Pence said in a prepared statement.