Dive Brief:
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Indiana's Governor’s Education Roundtable voted (21-3) Monday in favor of new education standards to replace the abandoned Common Core.
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The standards, which must still be approved by the Indiana Board of Education next week, will be implemented in the 2015-16 school year.
- Opponents, who packed the statehouse Monday in protest, are wary of the new benchmarks, believing they are merely a re-packaging of the Common Core. Indiana is the first state to drop the Common Core, making the creation of these new standards a somewhat hurried process.
Dive Insight:
It isn’t much of a surprise that Indiana’s Education Roundtable, which is spearheaded by Gov. Mike Pence, passed the new standards. While the new benchmarks were developed by Indiana teachers and administrators — a plus for those opposed to the Common Core — it is difficult not to focus on the sheer lack of time they had to create these new standards. Indiana opted out of the Common Core less than a month ago and it has already created a new set of standards that, if all goes as planned, will be put into place this fall. This sounds incredibly rushed, which leaves opponents thinking one of two things: The new standards were hastily assembled and lack depth or the new standards are, in fact, a refashioned version of the Common Core.
All this said, as more states push to opt out of the federal standards, seeing how Indiana handles the process will be a good indicator for the rest of the nation to decide whether or not opting out is even worth it.