Florida’s State Board of Education Tuesday will start reviewing additions to the state’s new student learning standards.
The review comes after the department held a series of town hall meetings across the state at the behest of Governor Rick Scott in an attempt to tamp down criticism of Common Core.
Critics have called the standards a federal intrusion into state education policies -- a claim the system’s supporters reject. Florida’s response to critics has been to largely back away from using the words “Common Core”, even though the standards were adopted in 2010 and are now in place throughout elementary schools. Florida Department of Education spokesman Joe Follick says state education officials are preparing to revise the standards: in many cases, adding to them.
“I don’t know if there have ever been a set of standards for K-12 students in Florida that have undergone two separate votes before the state board of education, dozens of hours of public hearings and a month-long opportunity to weigh in," he said.
Proposed changes include a greater emphasis on cursive writing and teaching money concepts in earlier grades. Still, the state continues to distance itself from Common Core. It has rejected the system’s attached tests, called PARCC, which were supposed to replace the English and math sections of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. What students will take instead is still being decided.
