HOWARD COUNTY – Indiana was one of the first states to embrace the Common Core State Standards in 2010, and last week it became the first to drop the academic benchmarks, leaving local superintendents leery of what lies ahead.
Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation March 24 that requires the state board of education to adopt new academic standards by July 1, ending Indiana’s run with the nationally standardized Common Core benchmarks for K-12 math and English language arts that became so controversial.
Kokomo School Corp. Superintendent Jeff Hauswald called the move a “solution in search of a problem.”
“Why are we moving away from standards already aligned to the SAT and ACT college entrance tests?” he said. “In addition, these standards have been carefully researched and designed by educators and professionals from around the nation.”
Forty-five states, including Indiana, initially adopted the Common Core standards, which were developed by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, with input from educators across the country. The plan was to have a new assessment tool available in 2014-15 to test students’ mastery of the standards, but Indiana now will take a different course of action.
Critics of the Common Core said the standards took away local control of what is taught in schools. Some opponents said Indiana’s previous academic standards were more rigorous, and the Common Core lowered expectations for students. Hauswald disagrees.
“I don’t believe Common Core restricts Hoosier students in any way; rather, I believe Common Core is a starting point for educators that allows for Hoosier creativity and flexibility, while providing a benchmark that allows Indiana to measure our work to guarantee our students are prepared for college and career readiness,” he said. “Our students must be able to compete beyond Indiana borders.”
Northwestern School Corp. Superintendent Ryan Snoddy also is unsure how Indiana students will measure up to students from other states in the future.
“I’m a little concerned about our students as we prepare them to compete with other students in the country who may still be following the Common Core,” Snoddy said. “I didn’t see Common Core as an impetus to change instruction.”
In February, Indiana assembled a panel of educators to begin drafting new academic standards, and the state board of education held public hearings to gather public input on the draft. Some say the new draft is too similar to the Common Core.
Snoddy’s biggest worry is how those new standards will be assessed. The legislation passed Monday calls for schools to administer the ISTEP or a comparable assessment.
“We were dramatically shifting how we’re assessing students [under the Common Core],” Snoddy said, referencing different testing formats that tried to assess higher level thinking skills. “I’m not sure where we’re headed with that. It appears to me Indiana is going to have to develop its own assessment tool.”
Developing a new assessment would be a tall order. Snoddy pointed out the need for a valid and reliable assessment tool, because it impacts data used for students’ proficiency rates, schools’ A to F grades and teacher evaluations.
Hauswald said state and local resources have been wasted on implementing and now withdrawing from the Common Core standards.
“Significant Hoosier resources could have been saved by making this decision two years ago,” he said. “This is a bad decision made worse by the timing.”