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New State Standards focus for committee

Ahead of BESE vote, Bourque briefs members

Jeannine LeJeune
Online Editor
Crowley Post-Signal

Among the few items in the Acadia Parish School Board’s committee meetings Monday night was a quick run-through of the proposed Louisiana State Standards that will be voted on by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education next week.
Some have argued that a lack of changes in the standards – roughly 80 percent of the purported Common Core Standards remain in the new Louisiana State Standards – is making this batch of standards a “rebranding of Common Core.”
Proponents, however, are seeing the good in the changes and the ongoing evaluations.
The standards were approved favorably by the review committee and sent to BESE for review. BESE’s Superintendents’ Advisory Council got its in-depth look at the standards last week and applauded the changes.
Realistically, their biggest worry is implementation, something one of its members – Acadia Parish Superintendent John Bourque – harped on Monday night.
“I think the key is to slow it down,” said Bourque. “It’s really how you roll (the standards) out.
“Let us catch up and do it right. No Child Left Behind ends in 2016. The new law begins in 2016-17. If we could dismiss letter grades for a year and make sure we do it right, we could get the standards, get them in place and not put teachers under the gun.”
That new law Bourque referred to is the Every Student Succeeds Act signed into law Dec. 10, 2015. It takes effect July 1, 2016.
Bourque is hoping the state also sees fit to suspend accountability and letter scores for a year to work through the implementation.
While there are many factors to ESSA — including some pulled from No Child Left Behind — the biggest thing it does is shrink the stake federal government has in every day education and hands over most decision making to states and school districts. That move is set to give states and local districts the flexibility to find local solutions for struggling students, schools and districts as the state and country continues to push for higher standards and higher performance.
It is, seemingly, the implementation of the standards that has most worried now.
Dr. Regina Sanford, chair of the Standards Review Committee, explained earlier this month that the committee has changed 21 percent of the Common Core Standards overall between English language arts and math in creating the Louisiana State Standards.
Specifically, in ELA, 11 percent of kindergarten through second grade standards were changed and 20 percent were changed in third through 12th grade for a total of 18 percent overall in ELA.
In math, 10 percent of standards in kindergarten through second grade and 28 percent in grades three through 12 for 26 percent overall in math.
Those against the new standards, particularly those who see it as a revamped Common Core, questioned the actual review. But, according to figures released by the committee, 100 percent of all standards – 854 in ELA and 433 in math – were reviewed in Louisiana’s previous math and ELA standards and those from various states around the country, including Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Massachusetts.
Helping Acadia, Bourque feels, will be the flexibility and flow teachers have received in this district regarding Common Core a few years back. In fact, Acadia was one of the early parishes to implement the standards.
Here, it was a slow and phased implementation that helped put Acadia teachers ahead of the game, so to speak, compared to some of their counterparts across the state.
Bourque is hopeful that a similar roll-out will be statewide with these standards if they are adopted.
“We will deal with it no matter what,” he said.
Bourque added that he is urging the district to focus on this year’s standards and testing policies before worrying about next year’s.
There is one other bothersome aspect to the whole adoption and implementation of new state standards and, potentially, new testing procedures and materials.
Louisiana has set this year as the second and final baseline year before starting to make a move for higher standards in regard to state testing. The state’s Department of Education is expecting to have in place by 2025 that “mastery” is the standard of excellence and A-worthy in Louisiana, not the current “basic.”

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