Local educators seek to stay out of Common Core politics
Green Bay area school districts have spent the past few years putting in place curriculum to support the Common Core standards.
Most educators try to stay out of the political back and forth about the controversial standards, but say they will continue using new curriculum even as state legislators and Gov. Scott Walker debate whether to end Common Core.
They have done hours of training for staff and teachers and have spent thousands of dollars to purchase new text books to support the new curriculum. School administrators now are in the process of training staff and updating technology to prepare for new standardized testing in spring.
Wisconsin is using the Smarter Balanced testing for younger students and the ACT suite to test high school students. The new tests replace the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts exams.
Mark Smith, assistant superintendent of continuous school improvement for the Green Bay School District, has said he did not know exact costs for the local switch to new curriculum in the past two years.
Green Bay was in the process of updating math and English and Language Arts curriculum as the standards were rolled out, so he said district administrators would have made changes anyway, including buying new textbooks and materials. The district likely incurred extra costs in training teachers to adopt methods to meet the new standards, he said.
"We decided we're sticking with them," said Andrea Thiry-Wenz, director of teaching and learning for the Howard-Suamico School District. "They are rigorous. We have made a three-year investment into it."
Wisconsin adopted the standards in 2010. Common Core is not a curriculum but a system to set benchmarks for learning in English, language arts and math. Wisconsin is among 45 states to adopt the standards, although a handful have since dropped out. Walker has said he would like to drop Common Core and create a committee to create new standards for Wisconsin.
De Pere Curriculum and Instruction Director Shelly Thomas said she prefers the new standards. She noted the standards are more comprehensive and rigorous than standards the state had created in the past.
In fact, Green Bay area districts are moving forward with Next Generation Science Standards, even though the state Department of Public Instruction has held off because of growing political backlash against Common Core. Local educators say schools need new guidelines and benchmarks. The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for Science, set in 1998, are the current standards.
CESA 7 held an informational meeting on Next Generation about a year ago and many local school administrators attended, said Judy Sargent, school improvement services director for CESA 7. Cooperative Educational Service Agencies, or CESAs, contract with school districts to provide shared services and programs districts cannot afford on their own.
She said local school officials continue to move ahead with hopes state legislators will not change their minds about Common Core.
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