A news analysis by Andy Brack | The state of South Carolina spent almost $150,000 and hundreds of hours over the last nine months rewriting public education standards that most agree are almost the same as Common Core standards maligned by conservatives.
A year ago as state schools prepared to implement national standards to ensure that the level of instruction received in Dallas or Seattle was similar to that in South Carolina, the General Assembly poked its way into the party. In a move some say was classic political micromanagement, the GOP-led General Assembly mandated that the state Board of Education, in consultation with the Education Oversight Committee (EOC), develop new English and math standards.
On Wednesday, the state Board of Education approved rewritten standards that EOC members say are around 90 percent the same as Common Core.
For many, the fracas has been an expensive lesson in futility costing an estimated and unbudgeted $147,436.11 to the EOC in salaries, benefits, travel, contractual services, meals, rental space and more. For others, the rewrite has been a waste of time. Meanwhile as a conservative political agenda swirls with Don’t-Tread-On-Me trumpets opposed to anything smacking of influence from “off,” others say what was passed just isn’t good enough and more needs to be done.
But for now, the squabble over standards seems to be over.
How we got where we are
Here’s a quick timetable of how South Carolina became the second state in the country to overrule Common Core standards.
Educators generally agree there’s a need for basic standards to guide teachers so they can prepare students to be ready for work at a new grade level, and by graduation time, for the workplace or college.
“People also confuse standards with curriculum,” said EOC member and former chairman Neil Robinson of Charleston. “A standard is something we aspire to have a child to learn. [For example], a child should learn before he gets out of kindergarten how to count from 1 to 100.”
For example, a standard might be that fourth graders need to know multiplication tables by the end of a school year.
Educators point out that standards don’t necessarily outline a method for teachers to help students acquire skills, but highlight proficiencies that are needed at each level of education. In other words, standards don’t mandate methods or content, but focus on skills and preparedness.
South Carolina long has had its own math and language arts standards, which were updated in 2007 and 2008. But also about that time, there was a national discussion in education circles among state superintendents and governors about the need for compatibility in standards from state to state. Why? So that a military kid in fifth grade in Anchorage would be able to transition easily if the family moved to Jacksonville because both schools, separated by thousands of miles, approached instruction within the same framework with the same grade-level objectives.
Good idea, many thought. Should help the United States become more competitive educationally, they agreed. So a broad, bipartisan coalition of state leaders took the effort national. States, including South Carolina in 2010, adopted these “Common Core” standards. The plan for South Carolina was to transition over three years into using the standards and have full implementation by the 2014-15 school year.
But as states started adopting standards, the federal government linked some big education grants to adoption of the Common Core as an incentive for states. Many observers now say that caused confusion and likely led to conspiracy theories of the government trying to control the content of education, which the standards just don’t do. And thanks, in part, to conservative media furor, the whole thing blew up as a political firestorm.
By June 2014, the legislature passed Act 200 and Gov. Nikki Haley signed a measure that mandated state educators to develop new “high-level College and Career Ready standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics with the intent of putting those new standards in place for the 2015-16 school year.”
Hence the nine-month rush commenced to replace Common Core and develop an alternative that was approved this week.
New standards are similar to Common Core
A report by the EOC says the state’s new math and language arts standards meet or exceed the national Common Core standards 100 percent of the time. In fact, language standards are 18 percent tougher and math standards are 15 percent tougher than Common Core. Content among standards is at least 89 percent the same, the report says.
“To me, that is just a rewrite about the Common Core standards that were in place,” said EOC board member Deb Marks of Irmo, the only person of a dozen to vote against the new standards on Monday.
But the new standards include material not found in Common Core, such as instruction in coins and money for students in grades 1 through 4 and more emphasis on data, measurement and data analysis. In language arts, cursive writing is included in grades 2 and 3 and some recommended texts in Common Core were removed.
- For a discussion on the similarities between the new standards and Common Core, see this March 11 post from Education Week.
The opportunity cost of new standards
One thing seemingly lost in the debate is how Common Core envisioned allowing local districts to have the flexibility to adapt general standards to local conditions. “Outsiders” who developed the framework built in a mechanism to allow locals to have flexibility for 15 percent of the standards.
As such, some say the last year or so of political angst over Common Core in South Carolina has been time wasted and opportunities lost to do more of significance for public education.
“I think that proponents of the Common Core at the national level and in our state failed to realize how important it is for local communities to have ownership, to feel like their teachers were involved in decisions what children were to learn,” observed JoAnne Anderson, a noted education consultant who once headed the EOC. “This isn’t about substance, but about the whole notion of we’re handing education off to people we don’t know and don’t know their intent.”
Nevertheless, she said, the debate over Common Core took time away from work that might have been done to improve education.
“It is clearly unfortunate that we have spent the money, time and goodwill to reproduce the Common Core,” she said. “I think that the people who are in favor of the redoing process would argue we have more ownership of it, it’s ours and worth the expenditure of effort.
“I certainly would have rather spent the time focusing on how children in poverty learn and what we can do to change their achievement levels.”
Robinson, the former EOC chair, agreed.
“To me, it is much ado about nothing. A standard is not just teaching people through rote memorization but we need to teach people how to think for themselves and think critically so they can solve problems.”
Marks, the lone vote against new standards, said more still needed to be done. While she supported the initial effort to dump Common Core for new standards, she’s not happy with the way things turned out.
Why? “Because the standards that have been approved are still Common Core. That’s not what the legislature asked for.”
What’s next
Now, the effort begins to make the new standards work. They’ll be implemented in the coming school year and become a part how educators teach in South Carolina. While not formally the Common Core standards, they should be enough of the same that the student who moves from one state to the next will be learning similar concepts, which advocates say will improve the nation’s competitiveness.
State Sen. Larry Grooms, the Berkeley County Republican who pushed the legislature to dump Common Core for new standards said it’s good the new benchmarks are written by South Carolinians.
“They will be reviewed according to law and they can, and probably will, be amended as time goes on,” he said. “That’s the process we’ve had.
“I think this is the best we can do. I’ve heard a lot of folks say this is Common Core rebranded. The truth of the matter is not everything in Common Core was bad.”
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!