A trio of experts in education standards will deliver presentations to a steering committee responsible for helping develop new academic standards in Oklahoma.
The steering committee was formed after the Legislature repealed Common Core. The hearing is delayed by a few hours due to Monday morning's winter storm.
Due to weather, the Academic Standards Steering Committee meeting has been moved to 11 a.m.- http://t.co/BY4DnZWHuQ
— OK State Dept of Ed (@oksde) February 16, 2015
The Oklahoma Academic Standards Steering Committee will meet Monday and Tuesday in Oklahoma City. The meetings are open to the public and can be accessed online.
It will be the first steering meeting for newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister.
“The steering committee has an exciting opportunity to learn from experts who were instrumental in developing academic standards in other states,” Hofmeister said. “It is critical that Oklahomans have strong, rigorous academic standards to help ensure our students are prepared for college and career.
Oklahoma must rewrite its state education standards after Republican legislators last year repealed the Common Core standards that were to take effect this school year. The new standards are to be ready for the 2016-2017 school year.
The three education experts flying to Oklahoma to help guide the state in the creation of new academic standards each have ties to Common Core, but each have also helped create unrelated standards.
All three will speak during a meeting that starts at 11 a.m. Monday at the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, 655 Research Parkway, Suite 200, in Oklahoma City.
Larry Gray, a math professor at the University of Minnesota, helped develop Minnesota’s math standards in 2003 and 2007. He also helped create the Common Core math standards, but urged the state not to adopt them in 2010.
Gray said the state’s own standards had just been implemented, and that it was unfair to teachers to make another switch. He added that Minnesota’s standards were just as good as the Common Core.
Sandra Stotsky, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas, worked on the English language arts standards for Common Core. Stotsky eventually refused to sign off on the standards, and is a vocal opponent of Common Core. She has spoken to lawmakers in states across the nation urging them to repeal Common Core.
She also helped create Massachusetts' previous English standards, which many considered among the best in the nation. Those standards were dropped for Common Core.
Jane Schielack, whose work developing math standards was also used in creating the Common Core, has helped Pearson develop Common Core curriculum for teachers.
Last summer, she helped Oklahoma determine if the state’s old Priority Academic Student Skills standards were college or career ready after the state ditched Common Core.
Schielack, dean of assessments and preK-12 education at Texas A&M, has also developed standards in Texas.
Here is some of the insight the experts may share in Oklahoma:
Larry Gray
- In Minnesota, Gray said a focus on what textbooks students should use, or whether they could use a calculator in class brought work on Minnesota’s math standards to a stop. As a result, Gray told the team of experts to forget about the textbooks and calculators, and to focus only on what students needed to know. That included defining what a college- or career-ready student was. Minnesota’s definition meant ready for college-level algebra.
- Anyone tasked with developing the Oklahoma’s tests needs to be involved in the process from the start. That ensures the state is developing standards that can be tested, and that test makers understand what students need to know.
- Gray believes the committees creating standards should have co-chairs running them. In Minnesota’s case, that included Gray as a college professor, and a high school math teacher. That ensured insights from higher education and grade schools were included.
Sandra Stotsky
- Stotsky said committees creating standards should be chaired by one content expert from the a college or university. The committees should also only include people who are knowledgeable in that content field. That means an English language committee should not include a culinary arts teacher. The committee should also not be stacked with Common Core supporters if the Oklahoma expects to see truly new standards.
- The committees and their work needs to be transparent to gain the public's confidence. She said part of the problem with Common Core is some of the standards were drafted behind closed doors.
- The standards need to be clear and understandable. If teachers do not understand the standards, that means the standards don’t work, Stotsky said.
Jane Schielack
Schielack did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview about Common Core and academic standards at Texas A&M, she attributed an increase in testing to districts’ own policies.
"A lot of districts were adding to their assessment burden by saying, we've got to measure things every week or every month -- to the point where they were testing more than they were teaching," Schielack said in the interview. "These aren't things that are mandated by the law; those are things that districts decided to do."
In the same interview, Schielack gave her insight into what’s needed for a strong math curriculum:
"The bottom line is, a curriculum is only as good as its implementation," Schielack said. "I do all the things I do because what I really care about is helping the teachers do a good job. If they don't have a good curriculum, if they don't have good leadership, if they don't understand how to use the assessments, then they're not going to be able to do a good job. And most of them want to do a good job."
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