Dive Brief:
- On Monday, North Carolina’s Academic Standards Review Commission, a legislative subcommittee, released a report stating that the state’s decision to revise the Common Core State Standards will have to come with extra funds for schools.
- The 11-member commission was tasked with studying the standards and recommending revisions, a move stemming from Republican complaints about federal involvement in schools and remarks from some educators that the standards were poorly thought-out.
- Among the things the subcommittee says will be needed to make the revisions work: more teachers, new textbooks, and summer courses.
Dive Insight:
While the call for new textbooks is an obvious side effect of new standards, the summer courses are less so. The report found that English students should be reading well by fourth grade, but many still aren’t. Those who are still struggling need the extra courses to catch up.
“Having students arrive with wide learning gaps who are also expected to learn and master too many standards is not leading to student success,” the report said.
The final revision recommendations are due in December, but in the meantime the committee suggested more specific targets in the math and English standards and an overhaul of when math concepts are taught. The math standards in the Common Core have proved particularly controversial. Proponents say they better align with helping students actually grasp math at a deep level, but critics say the focus has drifted too far from computational skills.
"The focus of K-8 instruction should be to develop the basic math skills needed for high school and college. It is good to understand concepts, but the goal should be rapid and accurate computation,” the subcommittee’s report reads.