Monday, January 27, 2014

Survey on Common Core

To Louisiana Educator readers: The above survey is intended to allow educators, school board members, parents, and other citizens to express their opinions about how Louisiana should deal with the Common Core State Standards. This survey is anonymous. No one will know the identities of survey participants. Note: There is a problem on some computers in viewing the results after you vote. Try moving the bottom slider bar to the right to move your view to the end of the statements where the results are tabulated. (Sorry about this minor glitch)

BESE has approved full implementation of the CCSS starting this school year and the PARCC testing for K-8 starting in the 2014-15 school year. The VAM based evaluation of teachers has been suspended for two years to allow time for setting base line results and to give teachers and students time to adjust to the new standards before VAM resumes.

This survey is important because several legislators plan to introduce bills in the coming legislative session that would either phase in CCSS more gradually than is now contemplated or to do away with it altogether and substitute standards developed for and by Louisiana. For the past 10+ years the K-12 standards used in Louisiana have been called Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) and were carefully spelled out for each of the core subjects and for each grade. I am assuming that if CCSS is rejected by the Legislature, our DOE would return to GLEs with any modifications approved by BESE.

Note: The survey leaves open what should be done with VAM since that is a separate issue. We may have a survey on VAM at a later date.