WaPo | Nearly all of the states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards
in English language arts and math and are in the process of getting
ready to implement them by 2014. In a number of states, however, the
standards are meeting with growing resistance for reasons including
questions about who was behind the initiative and whether they are
better than previous standards. Alabama, for example recently said it
was pulling out of the two consortia that are working on creating
standardized tests aligned with the standards. In this and the next two
blog posts, we explore some of the issues surrounding the standards.
(And you can see more here and here and here and here.)
This first post is about Indiana, which adopted the Common Core in
2010 under then state education superintendent Tony Bennett and where
some teachers are already implementing them. Bennett was ousted in last
November’s elections by veteran educator Glenda Ritz who opposed his
support for corporate-based school reforms. Ritz does not want to get
rid of the Common Core but wants to pause implementation and review the
standards. She opposes a bill in the legislature that would pull the
state out of the Common Core initiative. The Indiana Senate recently
voted to halt the implementation — though not pull out of the
initiative, though the state Board of Education is firmly behind the
standards. If it is sounds messy, that is because it is.
