Here's What State Education Officials Had To Say In Mandatory Common Core Report

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

Superintendent Glenda Ritz has said as Indiana reviews the Common Core, the focus needs to be on figuring out what standards will curb the need for remediation when students reach postsecondary education.

In a report on the Common Core State Standards that went to the governor and the State Board of Education earlier this month, Indiana Department of Education officials again emphasized the need for academic standards that prepare students for college and career.

“Nearly one-third of all 2011 high school graduates attending postsecondary schools in Indiana required costly remediation,” according to the report.

Although State Superintendent Glenda Ritz has stopped short of saying whether Indiana should stick with the new, nationally-crafted academic standards, she’s said repeatedly the state has a serious remediation problem and needs to take a closer look at its math standards.The report her office put out reviewing the new standards includes stats from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

(You’ll find the full Common Core report, including our notes, below the jump.)

State education officials had to submit a report on the Common Core to the governor, the state board, and the legislative study committee tasked with reviewing the new standards by July 1 as part of HB 1427, the complex pause proposal that passed the General Assembly this spring.

The review is short — just 8 pages — and doesn’t take a position on whether the Common Core is right for Indiana. Here’s what is in the report:

• Related

  Posts

  • Why Indiana Is Scaling Back Participation In Common Core Testing Consortia PARCC
  • Before Today’s Governing Board Meeting: Five Things To Know About PARCC
  • Ritz: Pausing Common Core Rollout Keeps Standards, Assessments Aligned
  • Education Next: Common Core Is A Set Of Standards, Not Curriculum

  Topics

  HB 1427: What Complex Common Core Pause Means For Indiana

  A timeline of how the standards were developed and adopted in Indiana;
• Definitions for “standards” and “curriculum,” important because they’re often confused when talking about the Common Core;
• A list of upcoming deadlines related to HB 1427;
• Links to local and national resources on Common Core implementation and adoption.

The legislative study committee will meet for the first time to hear testimony on the new standards at 1 p.m. Aug. 5. But it’s as yet unclear how much sway the review will have on the State Board of Education, which has the ultimate say in standards adoption. The board has until July 1, 2014, to make a decision on the Common Core.

“The IDOE recognizes that it is not the sole actor in this matter, and that state standards are not developed, approved and implemented by the department alone,” the report concludes. “Rather, standards come about through collaboration amont the IDOE, the public, educators from pre-K through postsecondary, the Education Roundtable and the State Board of Education.”

We’ve marked the full report with our comments below.

[documentcloud url=https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/726550-hea1427report-june29.html format=normal sidebar=false ]