New student standards provide more clarity

The new student standards approved by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is an advantage to St. Mary Parish school teachers because it provides more clarity for teaching subjects, St. Mary Parish Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Teresa Bagwell said.

BESE approved the new standards in English and math on Friday.

These new standards will replace Common Core curriculum.

“For St. Mary, this is highly preliminary because we just received them,” Bagwell said. “We don’t really see a vast difference between the newly approved version and the prior version.

“It’s mostly clarity. It clarifies some of the language in the standards.”

Despite the changes, the standards will remain rigorous.

“The new standards maintain high learning expectations in Louisiana and will keep our state’s progress moving forward as we prepare our students for college and careers,” BESE President Jim Garvey said in a news release.

The standards were developed through a collaborative statewide process, which included Louisiana educators and public input.

BESE brought together a steering committee and three content subcommittees to review and develop the standards.

Approximately 100 educators from more than 30 parishes participated in the process. Educational, parent and business organizations also were involved.

Committee members spent 9,000 hours developing standards.

“I want to thank the educators serving on the review committees for their dedication to this important process and congratulate them on the end product — Louisiana-specific standards that meet the unique needs of our students and our state,” Garvey said.

The standards are intended to go into effect next year. However, there is a debate about allowing school districts an additional year for implementation, Bagwell said.

An additional year would provide the Louisiana Department of Education time to guide districts with the implementation of new standards.

St. Mary Parish school system has a plan in place to prepare for the implementation of standards.

“In St. Mary, our instructional division has already opened the standards and started comparing each standard individually to the standard currently being used in that subject and grade level,” Bagwell said. “They’ll be working over the summer to make any necessary revisions in our instructional calendars or in resources that we need to teach specific content or skill.”

Implementing new standards for educators in grades 3 to 8 is not an easy process, especially since Common Core’s beginning.

“Our teachers have been taxed with the idea of implementing a new set of standards,” Bagwell said. “Initially with few resources, we had to adapt to new resources.

“We had to find those that most succinctly align to the standards.”

Although the process for teachers has been difficult, brighter days seem to be ahead with the adaptation of new standards.

“They’ve been through this process for the last couple of years,” Bagwell said. “It’s certainly not something that we relished having to go through again.

“So the fact that standards were simply clarified and refined a little bit without a massive overhaul is definitely an advantage to our teachers.”