Florida Department of Education Recommends Standards Changes

Screenshot / Common Core State Standards

The Florida Department of Education has released a list of suggested changes to Florida's Common Core standards.

The Florida Department of Education has released a list of proposed changes to the state’s K-12 standards, known as Common Core.

The list includes 13 changes to the English language arts standards and 33 changes to the math standards, nine of which are new standards.

Many of the changes were suggested by teachers.

Florida is one of 45 states to fully adopt Common Core, which outlines what students should know at the end of each grade. But the standards have been criticized from both the right and the left over concerns about reducing local control, the quality of the standards and other issues.

One focus of the changes is making sure the standards are appropriate for elementary school students, particularly kindergarteners. One change would no longer require kindergarteners to have to know the author’s name, for instance.

Another change would add Calculus standards currently used to the new standards. Calculus is considered a key math course for ensuring students are ready for college-level work, one of the overall goals of the Common Core standards.

But most changes to the standards are for clarity’s sake. For instance, “Describe how reasons support specific point the author makes in a text” would become “describe how an author uses reasons to support specific points in the text.”

The State Board of Education will consider the changes at their Feb. 18 meeting.

You can read the recommended language arts changes here and the math changes here.