Tennessee’s Common Core education standards

Here are key details about Tennessee’s Common Core education standards:

THE STANDARDS: A set of higher expectations in math and reading that were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to ensure that every student graduates high school prepared for the future. The new standards are replacing Tennessee’s old set of expectations for students. The standards set goals for what students should know in each grade, but they are not a curriculum. Local school districts will continue to customize and choose their own curricula and textbooks. The standards have been voluntarily adopted by 45 states. Tennessee adopted them in 2010 and began a three-year phase-in the following year.

SUPPORTERS: Education advocates say the standards’ focus on critical thinking, problem solving and writing skills are needed to help students prepare for college and the workforce. The state has provided training on the standards to more than 42,000 educators.

OPPOSITION: Critics say the standards were written in private and never tested in real classrooms. Another concern is that they could lead to the sharing of personal student data with the federal government. Earlier this year, education officers from 35 states sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan addressing concerns that there will be new reporting requirements because of the standards. They said that won’t happen and that the federal government is prohibited from creating a student-level database with individual students’ test results. They said the states will continue to provide the Education Department with school-level data.

LEGISLATIVE ACTION IN TENNESSEE: A broad coalition of Republican and Democratic House members have passed a bill seeking to delay further implementation of the new standards by two years. The testing component for the standards would also be delayed for two years. The Senate would have to agree to those provisions before the measure would head for the governor’s desk. When Gov. Bill Haslam was asked if he would veto the legislation if the Senate concurs, he just stated that he’s “committed … to Common Core.”

Proposals that would require any data collected under the standards only be used to track the academic progress and needs of students has been approved in both the House and Senate.