State Board of Education adopts education standards for Iowa students

The State Board of Education unanimously approved the adoption of Common Core State Standards today, paving way for the development of common expectations among Iowa's school districts.

The standards will be part of the Iowa Core – the skills and concepts in reading, math, science, social studies and 21st century skills that students must learn.

Gov. Chet Culver urged the board to adopt the standards prior to the meeting. The board's approval could lead to additional federal funding, but state educators said the initiative is more about developing common expectations for students at all grade levels throughout the state.

The Common Core Standards Initiative is a set of curriculum standards formulated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The standards aim to create a national education benchmark for elementary and secondary teachers.

Acting Director of the Iowa Department of Education Kevin Fangman said today's vote will help in comparing the effectiveness of Iowa's education system with the rest of the country.

“When this system is complete, we can compare the achievements of Iowa students to other states and high-performing countries in the world,” Fangman said.

Iowa has been criticized nationally for its lack of state standards. Instead, standards are set at the district level.

“The standards that most Iowa school districts have set for themselves are higher than the standards set at other states,” said Lew Finch, executive director of the Urban Education Network.

The Common Core State Standards won't eradicate these standards – unless they are lower than the state's level.

For school leaders, today's vote means waiting for guidance from the state department of education before knowing what impact the adoption will have on instruction.

“It remains to be seen,” said Katie Mulholland, superintendent of the Linn-Mar school district. “We went through two years of workshops to prepare for the Iowa Core Curriculum and now we have this. It's very hard to speculate what Iowa schools are supposed to do.”

Education consultants Judith Spitzli and Rita Martens told board members there are few differences between the Common Core Standards and the current Iowa Core Standards in the areas of math and language arts.

For literary essentials, the Iowa Core contains 93 percent of the content of the Common Core, while the Common Core contains 84 percent of what is in the Iowa Core, according to Martens' findings.

“They're very similar,” Martens said. “I don't think it would be a substantive change for teachers.”

Spitzli's results for math were similar: 99 percent of the Common Core is already in the Iowa Core, while 88 percent of the Iowa Core is contained within the Common Core.

“The content that was determined in the Common Core to be important and the content in the Iowa Core determined to be important are very similar,” Spitzli said.

The Common Core Standards Initiative is a set of curriculum standards formulated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The standards aim to create a national education benchmark for K-12 teachers to follow.

The Iowa Core was signed into law in 2008. All Iowa school districts and accredited nonpublic schools are required to implement the Iowa Core by 2014-15.