INDIANAPOLIS— Southwestern Indiana educators are questioning reports that Republican legislative leaders want to do away with Indiana implementing national academic standards known as Common Core State Standards.
Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma reiterated his position last week that he wants the state to move toward its own system of standards. Last Indiana General Assembly session, lawmakers paused the state’s implementation of Common Core to further study the standards it adopted in 2010.
Warrick County School Corp. Superintendent Brad Schneider said the district has held off rolling out Common Core to all grades to see what the state decides. Common Core standards are currently taught in kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms in the school district, Schneider said.
“Let’s make a decision and let’s move forward,” Schneider said. “I don’t know how much longer they think they need to study the issue. The problem is Common Core has become a political football, and it’s just being kicked around.”
Educators say Common Core standards prompt students to exercise more in-depth thinking and are, at times, more rigorous than current state standards. For example, while the state’s current standardized test, ISTEP +, is structured as a multiple choice test, Common Core prompts students to explain the process and reasoning they used to get to an answer.
Indiana is among 45 states to have adopted the standards, which President Barack Obama supports. However, along with Indiana, a handful of state legislatures have recently considered bills to stop or stall the implementation.
In November, an Indiana legislative study committee charged with reviewing Common Core failed to adopt a formal recommendation by a majority of its members. However, its informal recommendation calls for Indiana to develop new academic standards.
Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. has transitioned its kindergarten and first grade classrooms to teach entirely Common Core, while other grades are teaching primarily Common Core with some additional Indiana academic standards, said Velinda Stubbs, the district’s chief academic officer.
Stubbs said the district has mapped curriculum utilizing Common Core and done extensive professional development with teachers.
“The concern, I think, is a lot of districts have invested a lot of time and resources into making this switch. Then to make another switch to a different set of standards, it just wastes a lot of time and a lot of resources have been invested,” Stubbs said.
Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said her department is reviewing Common Core standards. The department also is reviewing Indiana academic standard indicators that are being taught in certain grades because ISTEP +, the test based off those standards, is still being administered to students.
Ritz said revisions already are being suggested to standards being taught in Indiana classrooms.
“Keep in mind that we are working with standards that we are currently teaching,” Ritz said. “There will be revisions to those standards.”
Ritz said she is taking a three-tiered approach to reviewing the standards. The approach will solicit input from teachers in the field, parents, higher education officials and workplace experts, as well as ensure the standards are “college and career ready” before they head to Indiana’s Education Roundtable and the Indiana State Board of Education for approval.
Public hearings will be held across the state in January, with the standards potentially before the State Board of Education for final approval in April, Ritz said.
Legislative leaders are closely watching the process taking place between Ritz and the Indiana State Board of Education, Bosma said.
“And again, it’s our last choice to step in, but we do have the authority and responsibility to do so if it doesn’t look like things are going in the right direction,” Bosma said.
Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon Superintendent Tom Kopatich said he believes the state will work to make the Common Core standards fit into what is already being taught in Indiana classrooms.
“When people come out and say we’re not having Common Core, we’re not by name, but I think we are by structure in a combination of different items,” Kopatich said.