Educators anxious About Testing, Whether New Oklahoma Standards Are Grade

The meetings were held as part of the EngageOK Summer Education Event sponsored by the Oklahoma State Department of Education at the Cox Convention Center in downtown Oklahoma City.

OKLAHOMA CITY – Proposed new education standards in math and English that were developed after Oklahoma scrapped Common Core standards a year ago are being made available to the public.

The draft standards were released to the public Monday night on the state Department of Education’s website. The state’s superintendent has pledged to make sure “Common Core never comes back to Oklahoma”, but the Hechinger Report found that many teachers are still using the standards and their principles in their instruction, if not their name.

The new standards are only for English and math, and will define what students should know at each stage of their education from pre-kindergarten through high school.

“In general, the results are pretty bad for all the publishers”, said Morgan Polikoff, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California who studies common-standards alignment.

Koss said the new standards will give students the tools to be successful critical thinkers and problem solvers whether or not they decide to go to college.

Hofmeister said additional town hall meetings about the standards will occur in August and September.

Educators are crafting this new academic framework to replace the Common Core standards that Gov. Mary Fallin repealed a year ago. Once the feedback is taken into consideration, a final draft should be ready in October. But the initiative has drawn the ire of many on the right, particularly conservative and tea party Republicans, who argue that the federal government is trying to cede control from states to determine local education standards.