Griffin: State can customize education

Common Core a focus in speech

Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin said Tuesday that he believes “substantive changes” are needed in the existing state education standards, and he will fight to make them.
Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin said Tuesday that he believes “substantive changes” are needed in the existing state education standards, and he will fight to make them.

Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin said Tuesday that policymakers should change the elements of the public school education standards that need changing and not worry about veering away from a nationally common set of math and literacy standards.

He also favored changing the name of the standards to reflect Arkansas modifications.

"Let's not just call them Arkansas standards. Let's truly make them Arkansas standards. Change them where they need to be changed. Don't be afraid to change them because it will somehow disconnect us from some entity outside the state," Griffin said about math and English/language arts standards that are the basis for instruction in kindergarten through 12th grades.

"Other states are making changes," he added.

Griffin heads a 16-member panel -- the Governor's Council on Common Core Review -- that will meet in public at 8 a.m. Thursday at the state Capitol to draft recommendations on possible changes to the Common Core State Standards in math and English/language arts. Arkansas and most other states adopted those standards in 2010.

Arkansas school districts and charter schools that serve some 460,000 students phased in the standards over the 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years.

Debbie Jones, the Arkansas Department of Education's assistant commissioner for learning services, said Tuesday after Griffin's speech that there has been no Arkansas changes to the national set of standards since the state's adoption.

"We have not identified changes with Common Core State Standards at this point," Jones said in an email response to questions. "We have officially named our science standards 'Arkansas Science Standards,' but we have not officially changed the Common Core State Standards for math and English/language arts to 'Arkansas Standards.'

Any recommendations for changes in the education standards made by the governor's council will be submitted to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. He will consider those recommendations in making his own proposals on the matter to the Arkansas Board of Education, which is the body that typically adopts education standards for the state's public schools.

The council -- made up of educators, business leaders and parents -- has held 40 hours of hearings in Little Rock and and nine public forums since April across the state on the Common Core State Standards. The governor appointed the council in March in fulfillment of a campaign promise to undertake an executive branch review of the common set of standards.

Griffin told Little Rock Rotary Club No. 99 on Tuesday and in an interview after his speech that some of the criticisms of the Common Core State Standards in Arkansas proved to be false. But there are also legitimate concerns about parts of the standards that he said could be clarified or adjusted in their rigor.

A claim that the existing standards did not call for knowing multiplication facts proved to be wrong -- the standards do call for students to learn the multiplication tables, he said.

But the standards call for students to know those facts up to factors of 10. He suggested that memorization of multiplication facts using multipliers of 12 and 25 -- similar to what he learned as a student in the Magnolia School District -- might be added to the standards.

Griffin, the father of two young children, also said there was a lot of discussion about whether the existing standards are developmentally appropriate, or too difficult, for the capabilities of typical 5- and 6-year-olds. The lieutenant governor said that remains an open question still to be decided.

And regarding the English/language arts standards, Griffin raised the possibility of making changes to the "text exemplars" now in the Common Core State Standards. Those exemplars are the books, reading passages and poetry offered as examples of the reading levels students need to master to ultimately be successful in college and careers.

Many of the criticisms and parental frustrations directed to the Common Core State Standards in Arkansas were actually about the state testing program this past year, Griffin said, or about a particular curriculum selected by a school or district to teach the standards.

Those are issues that are associated with the existing standards but are not actually part of the standards, he said.

Nearly half of the criticisms about the standards were about testing, he told the civic club members. Those complaints centered largely on the amount of time the state-required testing displaced other instruction.

Not only did students spend a lot of time taking tests this past spring but even when they weren't themselves taking tests, he said their teachers were pulled out of the classroom to proctor still other students taking tests.

The governor's council and the governor recommended earlier this summer that the state move away from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers that it gave to students in grades three through high school for the first time this past school year.

They recommended that the state switch to ACT Inc. test products for the coming school year and beyond. The ACT tests are shorter. And, if multiple other states also adopt the use of the tests, Arkansas will be able to compare student achievement here with that in other places.

The state Board of Education initially balked at Hutchinson's call for the change in the state-mandated tests but then voted earlier this month to approve the use of the ACT or ACT Aspire exams in most grades. The ACT Aspire tests will be given in English, reading, math and science in grades three through 10 this coming school year. The ACT college entrance exam will be given at no cost to students in grade 11.

Griffin said that while he couldn't say what the council or the governor will ultimately decide, he believes that "substantive changes" are needed in the existing state standards and he will fight for those, including some changes in privacy regarding student data. The data privacy protections might require legislative changes, he said.

Griffin said he couldn't predict what percent of the standards might be altered.

"How much is changed is ultimately up to the governor," he said.

A Section on 07/29/2015

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