Governor Ron DeSantis is announcing the state Department of Education’s replacement for Common Core standards.
Common Core is a set of educational standards for mathematics and English-language arts. Florida’s replacement is being dubbed the BEST standards, or Benchmark for Excellent Student Thinking. DeSantis is billing them as a more straightforward set of guidelines than Common Core.
"I heard from every corner of the state, parents who get frustrated with not even being able to understand the math problems that their students are bringing home with them," DeSanits said during a press conference in Fort Myers Friday. "And some of these parents actually had degrees in STEM fields. So that is obviously not the direction we wanted to go."
The new standards are not yet online for public view, but the governor says that will be happening within the next week.
DeSantis says the state will also be looking to “streamline” standardized testing. One of his first executive orders called for removing Common Core.
State Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran was on hand to explain who he consulted with in creating the new guidelines.
"We went back, completely ripped apart Common Core, and started with teacher experts, business experts, college experts, phonemic experts – every possible person over the last 12 months has been consulted," Corcoran said.
DeSantis says the new education standards will also include an emphasis on civics education.
