Blake Neff reports for the Daily Caller about one state’s difficult journey toward replacing controversial Common Core public school standards.
Oklahoma’s long-awaited replacement for Common Core is on the verge of being implemented, but is now being assailed by critics who argue the new school standards will represent a step backward for the state’s schools.
Oklahoma joined most other U.S. states in adopting Common Core back in 2010, but then about-faced just a few years later after a grassroots movement against the standards sprung up. In 2014, Oklahoma repealed Common Core under a state law that abolished the standards and required the state to create and adopt entirely unrelated new standards. …
… The success or failure of OAS is of some national relevance, because Oklahoma is thus far the first state to make a concerted effort to break away from Common Core. South Carolina and Indiana both officially repealed Common Core, but their replacement standards have been called out for being very similar, with just a handful of changes. Other states, like New Jersey, have “replaced” Common Core by doing little more than changing the name and the wording of a few standards.
Oklahoma, on the other hand, is a test for what happens when a state makes a strong commitment to divorcing itself from Common Core entirely. And according to quite a few critics, Oklahoma is failing the test.
