Members of the Senate Education Committee vote tomorrow on a bill that supplants the Common Core Standards. The committee heard public testimony last week.
The Common Core Standards are meant to provide a clear and rigorous set of expectations for what K-12 students should know and be able to do. They focus on the areas of English Language Arts and Math. While the standards were adopted in 2010, school districts are fully implementing them this year. Not everyone agrees with the standards, and that’s why Senate Bill 129 was created. It replaces Common Core Standards with new standards drafted by South Dakota educators. It requires decision makers to compare previous standards with Common Core, and compare standards with other states that aren’t using Common Core.
Supporters of Senate Bill 129 say Common Core has a negative impact on students and forces them to think abstractly before they are ready. They say the bill keeps fiscal and educational accountability within the state. Senator David Omdahl says there hasn’t been enough research before implementation.
“Where’s the pilot project on this,” Omdahl says. “Where’s the control groups? What’s the data? I cannot find it. And my greatest fear is we’re using these students as a pilot project. Without testing a pilot project, I’m concerned Common Core is just a social experiment.”
But opponents of the bill say Common Core is good for education and helps prepare students for college. Secretary of Education Doctor Melody Schopp says officials completed several years of preparations before implementing Common Core, including comparing standards and gathering feedback and analysis from educators. She says Senate Bill 129 gets rid of standards without offering a replacement.
“We’re looking back, we would take ourselves back, if we would do it right, you know I would say a minimum of two to three years to get this done again,” Schopp says. “And we put the schools in limbo as far as what they should be teaching in that period of time. So do you try to go back to the old standards? We’d have no assessment in place. And unwinding all of that I think would throw the districts into a huge amount of concern if we were to completely undo the standards that are in place today.”
Members of the Senate Education Committee vote on Senate Bill 129 on Tuesday.