Arkansas Educators Describe Strengths, Weaknesses of Proposed National Standards

Some Arkansas teachers, administrators and university faculty members offered their feedback to proposed national education standards at three public forums around the state sponsored by the University of Arkansas' department of education reform. On Thursday, one day after the release of the final draft of the proposed standards, a summary of the feedback was posted online.

The final draft of proposed standards by Common Core, an initiative of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, address English language arts and mathematics standards for grades K-12.

Sandra Stotsky, holder of an endowed chair in teacher quality at the University of Arkansas, co-authored the summary with graduate student James Woodworth. Stotsky moderated the three forums held in April and May in Farmington, Jonesboro and Little Rock. A member of Common Core's Validation Committee, Stotsky formerly served as senior associate commissioner in the Massachusetts Department of Education from 1999 to 2003, during which time she directed complete revisions of the state's licensing regulations, licensure tests for K-12 educators and pre-K-12 standards in 10 subject areas.

"As a member of the Validation Committee, I was one of five people who did not sign off on the final standards,” Stotsky said. “I was disappointed with the final version. It does require the analysis of our seminal political documents in the high school years, and I am grateful for that, although they should actually be studied in the history class where they would be appropriately contextualized. But I don't think that Common Core's ELA standards are consistently interpretable and teachable. They are not internationally benchmarked, they are not supported by research evidence, and they do not sufficiently or adequately frame the literary and cultural knowledge that one would expect of a graduate of an American high school. Arkansas' Board of Education might want to consider developing a set of demanding and specific content- and culture-rich standards for grades 6-12 for its more able readers."

Educators at the three public forums approved of the concept of having a uniform set of standards for the country but were concerned about the vagueness of the language in the proposed standards and gaps in the sequence of math skills to be mastered. They noted that existing Arkansas standards are stronger than the proposed national standards in some areas.

The summary includes several suggestions for improvement and implementation of the Common Core standards.

"We believe it may be informative for Arkansas education policymakers to read the concerns the state's teachers and others had with respect to the Common Core drafts as they look at the final versions released June 2 by Common Core," Stotsky said. "The summary of the forum discussions offers them an opportunity to find out whether any of these concerns have been addressed as they examine Common Core’s final standards."