Evaluating Indiana’s new education standards

Indiana was one 45 states to adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a set of federal education guidelines aimed to promote “college and career readiness,” in 2010.  Last March, Indiana became the first state to repeal the Common Core and reinvest curriculum control in the State Board of Education rather than a federal board.

The new law required the 11-member board to adopt new standards before July 1, 2014.  While Common Core has been repealed, many critics believe that the new curriculum has similar goals and guidelines to those of the Common Core.  Even though the new law resolved the jurisdiction complaint, anti-Common Core activists are upset about the similarity of the new standards to the Common Core.

In an interview with the Rover,Indiana State Representative Tim Wesco, Republican, expressed his dissatisfaction with the new standards.  “They are slightly better, but I do not think they are as good as the old Indiana standards were,” he said.  “The old Indiana standards were much better in mathematics and language arts.

“I know that some of the biggest critics of Common Core have not been pleased with the changes that have been made to the new Indiana standards,” Wesco continued. “I’m disturbed that those who were advocating the strongest against Common Core haven’t been pleased with the new Indiana standards as well.”

Opponents of the Common Core have criticized its educational approach as a form of mere preparation for the workforce rather than holistic development.  Anthony Esolen, Professor of English at Providence College, explained to the Rover: “The problem with Common Core is not that it is wrong in this or that particular.  Its whole approach to education is starkly utilitarian and heavily dependent upon fashionable techniques; it mistakes what it means to be educated, and it has no understanding at all of what human beings are for.”

Esolen highlighted how the Common Core falls short of a true education, which should cultivate wisdom and virtue rather than mere skills.

“We know, or we should know, what the difference is between mere information and knowledge, and between knowledge and wisdom.  We know that the intellectual virtues and the practical moral virtues are bound together,” Esolen said.

“We know, and I don’t know how we can have let it slip our minds, that the category of ‘useful’ is subordinate to higher things,” Esolen stated. “[T]he greatest things even in this life upon earth can never be valued according to their utility.”

Under the replacement bill, Indiana schools still must meet national criteria in order to receive federal funding.  The bill uses language similar to that of the Common Core Standards, such as requiring students to “meet national and international benchmarks for college and career readiness.”

Though the original intention of the bill was to repeal Common Core, the final version of the bill resembled the old standards so closely that the bill’s author, State Senator Scott Schneider, Republican, voted against it.

Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, drafted a report to Indiana Governor Mike Pence regarding the State Board’s new standards.  In the report, Stotsky criticized the Board’s curriculum for being too similar to the Common Core.

“According to the department’s own analysis, 93% of the standards in grades 6-12 in draft #2 were identical to or slightly edited versions of Common Core’s standards in grades 6-12,” the report read. “The differences between draft #1 and draft #2 lay mainly in K-5, even though K-5 in draft #2 was, according to the department’s own analysis, also heavily repetitious of Common Core’s standards.”

“Indiana now has a warmed-over version of Common Core’s standards in math and ELA,” Stotsky told the Rover.  “Both sets of standards are, if it can be believed, even worse than Common Core’s.”

“That’s what Governor Pence got for his duplicity in telling the voters he was getting rid of Common Core, and then letting his Education Policy Advisor, Claire Fiddian-Green and the director of assessment and accountability at the IN DoE (Molly Chamberlin) stack the two revision committees with teachers and administrators who had already agreed to write up this warmed-over version of Common Core–so that he could try to fool the voters,” she explained.

Many Common Core opponents believe an entirely new system must be adopted. “You have to tear the whole thing down,” Esolen suggested. “If I were advising someone who wanted to build a new school, I’d say, ‘Forget everything that you think education is about, if you have heard it repeated commonly in the last fifty years.’”

“Break out the old textbooks and look at what our grandparents studied when they were small children.  Go back to the founders of great scholastic traditions, like Don Bosco, or Elizabeth Seton,” Esolen concluded.

 

Hailey Vrdolyak is a junior political science, Spanish, and theology major who gets irrationally angry when anyone uses the words “coagulated” and “acclimated.” Contact her at hvrdolya@nd.edu.