West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards Story Archives

House & Senate Debate Future of Education Standards

Both the House and Senate are considering bills this year to change the state’s education standards once again. It’s a reoccurring theme at the statehouse since Republican lawmakers took control of the chamber in 2015.

In the Senate, lawmakers have approved a bill that does not replace the current college and career ready standards taught in schools, but calls for a cyclical review of those standards with the input of West Virginia teachers.

In the House, however, the discussion over potential changes is just beginning.

The bill taken up by a House Education subcommittee Wednesday would replace the state’s current standards with Math standards first used in California in 1997 and English standards from Massachusetts in 2001. Members of the subcommittee didn’t make changes to those provisions, but are recommending lawmakers give counties the flexibility to adjust state standards as they see fit.

House Bill 2443 would repeal Common Core standards in West Virginia and replace them with standards from that are almost 20 years old. Common Core, however, was repealed by the West Virginia Board of Education in 2015 and replaced with a new set of standards that were the result of statewide public hearings on the issue.

The five delegates on the K-12 subcommittee had previously discussed allowing counties to take the state’s current standards and make changes to them — which could potentially result in 55 different sets of education standards in West Virginia. All five members voiced a need for counties to have flexibility in the classroom, but there was some question over how much.

Republican Delegate Steve Westfall of Jackson County questioned Sarah Stuart from the State Department of Education, about the impact of allowing counties to change just 5 or 10 percent of the state standards to address local education needs.

“I do have a little concern, and I’ll express why,” Stuart said, “We are required to adhere to ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, and under ESSA, it requires that all states to have challenging, academic standards…and they have to be the same for all public schools in the state. So while, I think we could add 10 percent to the barebones standards that we’ve established at the state level…I do have some concerns with changing the standards for different counties just based on the language of ESSA.”

“Okay, so you’re saying… [we] would have a set of standards for all 55 counties, but if Wayne County wants to add a program for whatever; miner training or something, or Jackson County wants to have something for the Toyota plant, something that fills a need, then you could add to it?” Westfall asked.

“Absolutely,” Stuart answered.

Later during discussion, Westfall encouraged his fellow members to recommend to the full committee the importance of having a statewide set of standards, but to allow counties the flexibility to add additional programs where there’s need.

Delegates recommended adding permissive language in the bill to reflect that.

While all five members of the subcommittee voted to move the bill forward to the full committee on Education, some Democrats still expressed concerns about the implementation of the older California and Massachusetts education standards included in the bill, including Delegate Stephen Baldwin of Greenbrier County.

“The standards that we have in place were developed with the input of our teachers and of education stakeholders here, and the real issue? For me is continuity,” Baldwin said, “High school seniors right now have been through four sets of standards. If we were to change again, that’s just gonna cause problems in the classroom, and that discontinuity would really affect a student’s ability to learn, much less a teacher’s ability to teach.”

Baldwin, who is a former member of the Greenbrier County School Board, also says he feels the fight over standards is more about curriculum.

“Curriculum is where counties and teachers have the flexibility to make decisions about how they teach what they teach, and standards just set a standard for what students ought to learn,” Baldwin noted, “So I think those standards for what students ought to learn should be statewide standards, and then teachers and counties should have flexibility through their curriculum to figure out what’s best for them about how to learn that.”

Delegate Upson, who’s a sponsor of House Bill 2443, says teachers in her county want more flexibility when it comes to standards.

“Anytime that you give the state more control and you push that down to the local level, and you give counties the option to kind of decide what standards and assessments best meet the students that they serve,” Upson explained, “Now, I know that because of the Every Student Succeeds Act, we have to have a uniform assessment, but I have gotten feedback from teachers in the Eastern Panhandle that we just mandate too much from in Charleston, and so they would like to see a lot more flexibility and control at the local level.”

House Bill 2443 has also been second referenced to House Finance, and Delegate Upson says the House will likely consider the Senate’s version of the bill which has already been approved by the chamber.

Senate Bill Removes Remnants of Common Core in W.Va.

A bill to prohibit any Common Core-based education standards from being taught in West Virginia classrooms was taken up in the Senate’s Education committee Saturday. The standards have been debated for years at the statehouse and now lawmakers are looking at legislation that specifies what can be taught.

Common Core education standards have been a central point of debate in the West Virginia Legislature for years now.

In December 2015, the West Virginia Board of Education responded to concerns raised by both lawmakers and members of the public over the standards and voted to repeal them. They were replaced with the current education standards taught in West Virginia schools – the West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards.

These new standards were the result of an 8-month study led by state Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano who consulted with West Virginia teachers, higher education officials, as well as members of the public.

But during the 2016 state Legislative session, lawmakers were still concerned – saying the West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards were too similar to Common Core.

This year, lawmakers are attempting again to get rid of any remnants of Common Core with Senate Bill 524.

The bill prohibits Common Core based standards in West Virginia schools, and requires teachers to use two specific sets of standards in their place: math standards from California adopted in 1997 and English-Language Arts standards from Massachusetts adopted in 2001.

Republican Senator Patricia Rucker from Jefferson County is the bill’s lead sponsor and a former educator. She says it’s important West Virginia get rid of Common Core and bring in something that’s been nationally recognized and proven to work.

“Massachusetts is nationally recognized as one of the best school systems; California, same thing,” Rucker said, “Both of these standards are before Common Core. No one can say that it has any relationship to Common Core, so we are making the constituents happy.”

Another requirement in the bill is that these new standards be implemented for at least five years, starting on July 1, 2017. Rucker says that’s so that both teachers and students have continuity.

“I know administrators; they have been told to do this, this year, something else the next year, something else the next year; they want stability, so that’s one of the reasons the bill says, we’re going to keep these standards for five years,” she noted.

However, if any changes are proposed to the standards within that timeframe, a 60-day written comment period would be required and at least four public hearings in various locations around the state.

Surprisingly, after the years of heated debates over anything related to Common Core, there were no questions or discussion in committee Saturday. However, a handful of senators did vote not to advance the bill.

Senate Bill 524 now goes to the full chamber for consideration.

W.Va. Public Schools Are Now Being Graded

The West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards are being implemented for the first time in West Virginia schools this fall and so is a new system to grade the schools themselves.

Lawmakers were updated about the implementation of both the new standards and the accountability system during an interim meeting at the Capitol Monday. The system measures the performance of individual schools and gives them an A through F grade based on a variety of factors.

83 percent of a school’s performance is based on growth and student proficiency. The remaining 17 percent is based on non-performance items like attendance, graduation rates, and passage of dual-credit and AP courses.

West Virginia Board of Education member Lloyd Jackson says the grades the schools receive are directly tied to the standards taught in the classroom.

“We can’t constantly be changing our standards,” Jackson said, “Our assessments need to be aligned and they need to be consistent. Our accountability system has to operate over a number of years to be the kind of indicator of growth we want to see, and yes, we have to build capacity in those schools, but in order to know where to do that is to pin it on the results of our system as I’ve outlined to you.”

Jackson says the 2015-2016 grades for schools will be released in the next few months.

House Education Introduces Changes to Common Core Repeal

A bill to repeal Common Core based education standards and assessments in West Virginia is making its way through the House of Delegates, but has slowed in the chamber’s Education Committee.

Members of the committee spent three meetings last week discussing a bill that would require the state to repeal Common Core. After hours of testimony, committee chair Del. Paul Espinosa pulled the bill before putting it to a vote, explaining he wanted to give members more time to digest the information shared. This morning, the committee put the bill back on the agenda, but didn’t discuss it.

In December, members of the West Virginia Board of Education voted to repeal the Common Core based standards they had in place, replacing them with a new set, the West Virginia College and Career Ready Standards. Those standards were the result of an 8-month study led by state Superintendent Dr. Michael Martirano, consulting West Virginia teachers and higher education official as well as members of the public.

But lawmakers have continued to voice concerns over the standards, saying they are too similar to the previous Common Core aligned set.

Education Chair Del. Paul Espinosa says his committee will consider a committee substitute, a new version of the bill that makes changes to the introduced version.

“Essentially what the committee substitute would do is codify the repeal that the board makes last year,” Espinosa said. “Also, it calls upon the board to work continue to work collaboratively with the legislature to address remaining concerns that there are with the standards. The proposed committee substitute also deals with the question of testing. That is one of the things there seems to be the widest agreement on, the current summative assessment is perhaps do not best fit the needs of West Virginia.”