What The Indiana Chamber Is Saying About Proposed Education Standards
Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana
K-12 educators and subject matter experts reviewed the state's academic standards and released a draft of new expectations last month.
The Indiana Chamber of Commerce wants to see more rigorous high school math standards and a recommended reading list added to the proposed expectations for schools the State Board will consider next month.
“The opponents of Common Core have talked a lot about the so-called ‘common algorithm’ in elementary math,” says Education and Workforce Development Vice President Derek Redelman. “That has been part of our old standards and we’ve suggested those ought to be part of it.”
State education officials released drafts of new academic standards to replace Common Core last month. The pro-Common Core Chamber commissioned its own review to compare the proposed standards to those in other states.
The review looked at standards in three states: Massachusetts, which has adopted the Common Core, and Virginia and Texas, which have not. Redelman says the point of the review was to make sure that there’s nothing missing in Indiana’s next set of student expectations.
The group that wants Indiana to exit the initiative to share standards, Hoosiers Against Common Core, has been critical of the nationally-crafted expectations the state is using now. Co-founder Erin Tuttle says even with the proposed changes, the draft standards fall short of other high-performing countries. She says Indiana needs standards that expect fluency at younger grades.
“That’s kind of how they do it in Singapore,” Tuttle told StateImpact. “They show the conceptual method being used next to the standard algorithm so that they understand it. You know, by third grade, those concepts are dropped because they’re supposed to move on. They call them crutches.”
Both the Chamber and Hoosiers Against Common Core say the proposed standards will likely need to be whittled down before the State Board considers them next month. State education officials plan to take feedback on the standards until the middle of next week.
