Anti-Common Core Academic Won’t Offer Feedback On Proposed Indiana Standards

Elle Moxley / StateImpact Indiana

K-12 educators and subject matter experts are reviewing Indiana's academic standards.

State education officials have asked a half-dozen subject matter experts to weigh in on proposed academic standards to replace the Common Core in Indiana.

But one of those experts now says she won’t participate, writes Eric Weddle for the Indianapolis Star:

Sandra Stotsky, a retired University of Arkansas professor and well-known Common Core opponent, has told Pence she won’t take part in the state’s drafting process unless a new version of the standards relies little on Common Core.

State education officials overseeing the process say revisions are ongoing and the final proposal will be unique and rigorous.

The opinion of Stotsky, who helped review Indiana’s earlier academic standards, has been considered essential by some lawmakers and others to ensure Indiana’s new math and English standards are high-quality and considerably different from Common Core.

But in an email to Pence on March 17, Stotsky said state officials have so far created a “warmed-over version of Common Core’s standards” for English language arts. Concern, she said, comes from a state analysis that the source of proposed English standards for Grades 6-12 is more than 90 percent from Common Core.

There’s less overlap in the K-5 English language arts standards, writes Weddle: Only about a third of the proposed Indiana expectations come from the Common Core, and 20 percent came from standards Stotsky herself wrote.

We’ve written extensively about the process to draft new, Indiana-specific academic standards. Teams of Hoosier educators and experts put together the new expectations from several sets of academic standards. They’ll be revised several times before going to the State Board next month.