Legislature votes to ax Common Core as new standards pondered

Indiana policymakers made several changes Wednesday to education rules, from changing K-12 standards to modifying ISTEP exam dates.

In the Indiana Senate, lawmakers approved legislation that would void as of July 1 the national Common Core standards the state adopted in 2010.

An hour after Senate Bill 91 was sent to Gov. Mike Pence for his consideration, members of the State Board of Education discussed progress on new English and math standards that will replace those Common Core benchmarks.

Glenda Ritz, superintendent of public instruction, said the proposed standards would be brought to the board sometime in April after review by national experts and the state Education Roundtable, of which the governor is a member.

A vote on the standards is being delayed so more than 1,000 comments can be reviewed and used to modify the draft.

Some board members remain concerned that teachers across the state will be hard-pressed to develop curriculum based on the standards in a timely fashion. Administrators from the Department of Education and the Center for Education & Career Innovation said they are worried teachers face “standards transition fatigue” because of multiple changes in past years.

To combat that, there will be coordinated outreach to teachers and a “rebranding” effort to differentiate the new standards from Common Core.

Also on Wednesday, the board:

• Adopted new social studies and history standards for the 2014-15 school year, as part of a standard update. Board member Andrea Neal was the only one to vote against the standards.

• Extended by two days the time span for schools to administer the annual ISTEP test. K-12 schools requested the additional time to better prepare students, many of whom had missed several days of school this year because of extreme winter weather.

The testing window for the electronic portion of ISTEP is now April 28 to May 13. The so-called “paper/pencil” version of the test can be given April 28 through May 9.

This will delay the calculating of ISTEP results by five days to May 30, said Michele Walker, Department of Education director of student assessment. Walker said extending the testing time for ISTEP will not result in additional costs to the state or in additional fees from exam administrator CTB/McGraw-Hill.

Call Star reporter Eric Weddle at (317) 444-6222. Follow him on Twitter: @ericweddle.