Governor Ron DeSantis (R) announced last week that he signed an executive order to remove the remaining aspects of Common Core from the Florida State Standards Curriculum. DeSantis has asked members of the community, such as parents and teachers, to write letters to the commissioner with ideas on what to replace the curriculum with. The action is immediate, meaning that Florida now has no curriculum in place for K-12 for the 2019-2020 school year. If the executive order is carried out to its fullest potential, that means Florida has less than six months to create a brand new curriculum from scratch—a task that is going to cost a lot of time and a lot of money that the Florida Department of Education and its teachers do not have.
One of the biggest complaints about the Florida State Standards (or, as Ron DeSantis calls it, Florida Common Core) is the difficulty of the curriculum. Standards are starting to gradual increase in difficulty in Florida to compensate for how far we are behind other states' educational standards. Additionally, the methods in which we teach certain concepts, such as multiplication, tends to vary as different students have different learning styles and needs. The way students are being taught challenging topics in schools may differ from the way that parents have learned these skills growing up, hence why they struggle to help their child with their homework. The curriculum is something that can be addressed and modified without completely throwing an entire program away.
Another major concern for Florida is the state's test, known as the Florida Standards Assessment. Florida's pass rates have been steadily low for the past five years, which makes the community question the efficiency of the curriculum and the accuracy of the test. Just last school year, only 57% of third grade students in the state passed their FSA. This means that almost half of the state failed the exam and therefore failed the grade.
National Common Core is a great concept if its implementation could be better. Unfortunately, our 10th amendment restricts this from happening and causes states to figure things out on their own. 47 states adopted the Common Core curriculum (or a close variation of it). Florida is one of the three states that refused to be associate with it—although, many aspects of Florida State Standards reflects ideas in Florida Common Core (but refuse to admit that).
Ron DeSantis saw the flaws in the Florida State Standards system and addressed the concerns he heard from parents during his campaign. Rather than try to make changes to fix it, he simply throws away an entire program without hearing from the professionals in the field first. Florida communities are asking for their best and brightest educators to step forward and voice their professional opinions to the governor and commissioner.
The commissioner is currently taking all emails regarding Florida Common Core at commissioner@fldoe.org.
