Education

Is this week the beginning of the end for Common Core?

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Three states – Iowa, Florida and Arizona – have rebranded the Common Core Standards Initiative with different names in clever attempts to bamboozle critics of the standards. (RELATED: Common Core proponents try to save flailing standards using this one weird trick)

On Monday, Indiana skipped this desperate marketing ploy and simply ditched Common Core altogether, reports The Indianapolis Star.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence affixed his signature to Senate Bill 91, a law ordering public K-12 schools across The Hoosier State to stop using the controversial education standards.

Indiana is the first state to opt out of Common Core.

“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level,” Pence said in a statement.

“By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and are uncommonly high, and I commend members of the General Assembly for their support,” the Republican governor added, according to the Star.

Two state-level agencies have already been working to rewrite Indiana’s academic standards: the Department of Education and the Center for Education & Career Innovation.

The goal is to have a final draft approved by a committee – composed primarily of educators and business leaders – by the end of April.

It’s not clear how much the new standards will differ from the Common Core standards. As the Star notes, some education analysts, including Common Core critic Sandra Stotsky, fear that Indiana’s new standards will simply be a rehash of Common Core.

This fall, for the first time, 46 states and the District of Columbia began implementing all or part of the Common Core standards, which attempt to standardize various K-12 curricula around the country. Federal grants have spurred the implementation.

Criticism of the Common Core has risen to a fever pitch. Opposition has brought together conservatives who are against a federal takeover of public education and leftists who deplore evermore standardized testing.

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