Indiana right to pursue its own 'path' on education standards, VU president says

As the first state to drop the national Common Core learning standards, Indiana is rushing to approve new state-crafted benchmarks in time for teachers to use them this fall.

Gov. Mike Pence in March signed legislation requiring new standards to replace the Common Core State Standards, even though the state was among 45 states that in recent years adopted the national standards spelling out what students should be learning in math and reading at each grade level.

The Indiana Education Roundtable is set to vote on the newest draft of educational standards Monday before they're submitted to the Indiana State Board of Education, which will give the final thumps-up. It's the last chance to request changes to the proposed standards before the state board meets on April 28 to either approve or reject the plan.

If either the roundtable or board rejects the standards, the process of crafting the standards would start again. That could delay getting them to teachers, who typically use their summers to prepare for the opening of the school year in the fall.

The approved standards will determine what Indiana public students will be learning for the next six years.

Helton said VU and other institutions of higher education are closely watching the process.

“As any higher education institute should be, we’re certainly interested in these standards, particularly as these students come into our school,” he said.  “We have to think of the end-game, and anytime you talk about increasing our educational standards, that’s worthy of discussion with people in and outside of the education world.”

North Knox superintendent and VU board member Darrel Bobe is okay with the legislature's decision to drop Common Core and focus on something better suited to Indiana's needs.

“I’m proud of the state for being brave enough to take a step back and say we’re not going to fall in line just because everyone else is,” he said. “It seems when it came time to adopt it, I think there was some unraveling and other states are taking a step back, and I think that helped in the legislature’s decision to take a step back.

“They saw not everyone is on board with the Common Core, and to me, it feels like they’re trying to listen to the voters,” Bobe said. “I think a lot of people in Indiana were against it, so there’s a piece of me that’s really glad to see they’re taking a hard look at this and not doing something because everyone else is doing it.”

The public had four weeks to digest the first draft of the new state standards and give input, which ultimately delayed the final board meeting about three weeks as drafters sifted through nearly 2,000 online comments.

Some conservatives have criticized the Common Core standards as a top-down takeover of local schools, and about 100 state bills were introduced this year to pause or repeal the standards, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Bobe, who also sits on the Indiana Works Council, said with companies like Cummins, Toyota and Futaba Indiana of America growing in the state, a shift in society’s perception about what constitutes a well-educated person is necessary.

“Everyone wants the best for their kids, including myself, but somehow we’ve made that to mean there’s a Plan A, as you’re going to a 4-year college to get a degree, then a Plan B at a 2-year, and that just can’t happen anymore,” he said. “It has to be two different Plan As, because the jobs are out there, and they’re good paying jobs, making $75,000 to $100,000 right out of school with a lot less debt.

“The pathways piece of this is just crucial, because it seems like we have the most educated bartenders in the world, because they get out of school and can’t find a job,” Bobe said. “I don’t want that to come across as saying that’s a bad job, because it’s not at all, but that’s just not what they went to school for.

"I want them to have an education and have jobs waiting for them when they graduate.”