On March 24, Gov. Mike Pence signed Senate Bill 91, with some points focusing on the replacement of Common Core standards with Indiana Academic Standards and the deeming of the Indiana Academic Standards as college and career-ready.

Krishna Pathak, CHS Political Discussion Club president and junior, said, “I think it’s a great thing that our state approached (the withdrawal from the Common Core standards). It was something that our legislature can actually come together and work towards to really put education back in the hands of states.” 

According to Glenda Ritz, Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Common Core is a set of student standards for English/language arts and mathematics, and Indiana adopted Common Core in 2010. However, the first draft of the new Indiana Academic Standards was put out in February, and several drafts of the standards have been created since then.

Ritz said the standards will be in a more final form when Indiana’s Education Roundtable votes on, revises and adopts the standards on April 21 in order to recommend the standards to the State Board of Education, which is expected to adopt the standards on April 28. The adopted set of standards will be in effect for six years.

Assistant Principal Brooke Watkins, who oversees curriculum in instruction and assessments, said the new standards as they currently are written are very similar to the Common Core standards.

Watkins said, “When you look at the new standards, very few things have changed. We’ll do whatever the state tells us to do as far as meeting criteria and guidelines, but we’re also going to take it to the next level and make sure that we’re providing meaningful and rigorous experiences for our students.”

However, according to Ritz, the first draft of the standards was created after a review of not only the Common Core standards but also Indiana’s previous standards as well as national standards for math and language arts. Ritz said the standards will be deemed college and career-ready.

Ritz and Watkins both said assessments will change as well.

Ritz said, “It’s a different type of question format. It will make sure that kids are doing critical thinking, and so it’s not gonna be a typical multiple choice test, so students will be able to use technology-enhanced questions to manipulate and drop and drag and to solve problems rather than choosing the right answer.

According to Ritz, the new assessments will be ready for the 2015-16 school year, and ISTEP+ testing and End of Course Assessments (ECAs) in their current formats will be in effect until the 2015-16 school year.

Pathak said, “Students such as myself, juniors or seniors, won’t be affected as we have already completed our ECA and (ISTEP+) testing. However students who have yet to take them, who end up taking the revised ones, should end up doing better because they have been revised to fit Indiana education, rather than the national education standards.”

Pathak said he supports having standards at the state level. 

Pathak said, “As far as I believe, the new standards, which are purposed to be in place for the next six years, differ greatly from the national Common Core standards and will have a positive impact on students, as they have been tailored for the students and teachers of Indiana.”