At a hearing last week before the Indiana Senate Education Committee, an expert on the Common Core State Standards selected by 46 states to help guide their educational programs, hit the nail on the head.
Mike Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and an advocate for the program, made the point that if the Indiana Legislature quashes the state's plans to embrace new academic standards, it would return to state-developed standards that have not elevated the performance of Indiana students.
Petrilli told the committee that while Indiana has standards of its own that are good, Indiana has one of the worst student achievement records on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
In prepared comments, he said Indiana has a classic case of good standards not actually having an impact on the classroom. "You need a different way forward," he said.
That's important because some in Indiana are proposing legislation now to force Indiana to drop out of participation in the Common Core standards approved in 2010 by the Indiana Board of Education.
Indeed, we have found it troublesome that while some Hoosiers want the state to drop kick the new standards, Indiana has not done particularly well under the old standards created by the state. The critics say the new standards represent a nationalization of school standards, but that is not true. The Common Core standards were created by the National Governors Association and the Chief Council of State School Officers, and not Washington. It does have the support of President Barack Obama, but the governors' group developed the program and states decided individually whether to participate.
As for Indiana's new Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, she said Wednesday that Indiana should slow down its implementation of Common Core, to allow time from an in-depth study of the new standards. She said she does not want to void the standards so much as she wants to review them.
We agree that as the state's top education official, she must review the program, but Common Core has been in the works for several years. This is no time to stop.
And we were wondering, if the legislature should make the mistake of killing Common Core, would we then have another in-depth study to determine why Indiana students have not been more successful under the existing academic standards?