Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Per my early posts, opting out of Common Core and keeping a No Child Left Behind waiver is no easy chore. As a new Edweek article details, those states that opted out are working with a very short deadline for coming up with an alternative to the Common Core. Given the complexity of developing academic standards, they cannot really do that within their current time frame. The easy option for some is to adopt the Common Core, with slight revisions, under a different name. This allows politicians or state departments of education to create the illusion that they rejected the Common Core. South Carolina's legislature, however, claims to even reject that illusion. Their legislation indicates that if the state department of education adopts any curriculum that was not created locally--"home grown"--the legislature itself must approve the curriculum.
Posturing aside, the practically reality appears to be that the "opt-out" states will operate under a curriculum that mirrors the Common Core in the immediate future and reserve major changes for a future multi-year process. Even then, they are likely to only make those changes necessary to be able to claim that their curriculum is not the common core.