Julie DelegalThis is part four of a multi-part series on Florida’s Future with the Common Core State Standards, presented in partnership with Folio Weekly.
Florida’s Board of Education on Wednesday voted 5-1 to allow school districts to choose their own teaching methods and materials in line with Gov. Rick Scott’s stated policy of local control for public school curricula. The board’s action does not change the standards upon which those curricula are to be based – that is, the Common Core State Standards.
The Florida Department of Education adopted the Common Core standards in 2010, began implementing them in 2011, and on Wednesday addressed the appendices to the Common Core Compact.
Although the board voted to allow local districts to voluntarily decide whether or not they will adopt the Common Core appendices, according to Times Union reporter Matt Dixon, there is no indication that Florida will ditch the Common Core State Standards, which set forth the goals upon which local curricula will be based.
The appendices would have extended the 45-state Common Core Compact, or memorandum of understanding, to matters going beyond just the standards, or learning benchmarks, into the realm of curriculum. “Standards” are “what” students should learn, while “curricula” detail “how” they learn those standards by determining which teaching strategies and course materials will be used in the classroom. Curriculum matters, proponents have said all along, are to be determined by local districts.
Gov. Scott suggested the move toward local district control of curricula in a letter to board Chairman Gary Chartrand dated Sept. 23. That same day, the governor declared in an executive order that Florida would withdraw from the 18-state test-development consortium, PARCC, and abdicate its position as fiscal agent for that organization. (PARCC stands for the Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness.)
The executive order came one week after the Miami-Dade Republican Party issued a resolution opposing both the Common Core State Standards and its yet-to-be-named aligned test. Miami-Dade Republicans were apprehensive about their perceptions of federal intrusion, invasions of student privacy and inappropriate or obscene material on Common Core-related reading lists. Reading lists, however, fall under the auspices of “curricula” and are therefore subject to local control. Wednesday’s Board of Education vote merely formalizes the governor’s policy to leave curricula in the hands of districts.
Look for local districts to hold meetings throughout their communities to hear criticisms and dispel myths surrounding the new academic goals. The Jacksonville Public Education Fund, which Chartrand helped establish in 2009, has already begun its campaign in favor of implementing the standards.
In other business, the board voted to keep in place a controversial school grades “safety net,” which means that schools won’t drop more than one letter grade below the grade earned in the previous year. Duval County Superintendent Nikolai Vitti is on record opposing the safety net. Vitti told the Times Union that the effort to soften the blow for schools that might otherwise earn an “F” merely continues to confuse the public as to what the grading system means.
Vitti would have preferred a “baseline year” with no grades to the safety net, he told the Times Union.
In an interview for Context Florida, Vitti said, “We’re eroding the public trust that those [test] results mean anything,” he added. “Let’s keep things consistent for long enough to determine whether kids are learning at a higher level or not.”
Next: Part 5, A Badass teacher speaks out
