The effort to put together new academic standards for Indiana schools continues, as does the move away from Common Core State Standards.
The Indiana State Board of Education is working to develop kindergarten-through-12th grade standards for Indiana separate from Common Core. Our desire is that the standards be challenging and realistic. But just as the old saying goes that a camel is a horse designed by committee, danger exists for the workability of the standards the state board is amassing.
At this point, the drafts reflect heavily on what has come before in similar discussions and similar standards — just more of it. This raises concerns that we are just piling on standards that look good as a document but don’t work in a classroom.
Officials at the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, which certainly wants and needs Indiana students to learn math to the best of their ability, pointed out some of the weaknesses in the draft as it now stands with regard to mathematics.
Derek Redelman, Indiana Chamber of Commerce vice president of education and workforce development policy, said that for the most part more content has been added on top of what’s in our current standards. That will result in our standards having breadth over depth, again.
We agree that understanding concepts — rather memorization for testing purposes — needs to be at the heart of Indiana education standards.
Heaping standard upon standard and placing concepts on the plates of children not developmentally ready is a recipe for performance trouble.
For instance¸ the concept of probability has been moved to grade three. Previously, it was not added until middle school.
Piling on “leads to the curriculum being too crowded, making it virtually impossible to properly teach or learn,” Redelman said.
We agree, and we urge educators to reassess standards as the process continues to allow classrooms to become places of excellence and success and not wrecks where too much was tried to be done too soon.
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