Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that he has officially ended Common Core in his state and outlined new standards that he says “embrace common sense.”
“When I took office, I made a pledge to the citizens of Florida to overhaul our educational standards to remove all vestiges of Common Core and return to the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic,” the Republican governor said in a press conference.
“It really goes beyond Common Core to embrace common sense.”
Conservatives have long been opponents of the controversial Common Core teaching practices, and many believe the reform harms innovation, school choice, and, ultimately, students.
Some of the changes being made to the school system in Florida include an elevated focus on math facts, increased focus on the “correct” answer and not the method, and placing reading at the core of the development process. The state will also pay for students to take the ACT or SAT.
“The great thing about these new standards is that each and every part is very clear and to the point, whereas old standards may have three steps. This one has one step,” Seth Federman, a member of the Florida Council of Teachers of English, said about the new rules.
The state’s education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, was at the press conference and also expressed support for the change.
“We want to produce students who are excellent thinkers and who are prepared for the world and who can go out there and grab a job and wrestle with the great questions of life, synthesize large volumes of information, make a great decision,” he said.
Not all the reactions to the governor’s press conference were positive, however.
The state’s teachers union said that not enough attention was being given to providing teachers with the resources they need.
“The Department of Education should be focused on what happens in the classroom,” Florida Education Association President Fedrick Ingram said. “The teachers and the teaching that goes on and giving teachers the time, the resources, and the funding.”
