Education

Missouri Board Approves Standards to Replace Common Core

By Daarel Burnette II — April 20, 2016 1 min read
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Missouri’s state board of education Tuesday approved a new set of standards that replaces the controversial Common Core State Standards, according to the Associated Press.

The new Missouri Learning Standards, which emphasize cursive handwriting and research in language arts, will go into effect this fall, but students won’t be tested on the new standards until the spring of 2018, according to the AP.

“These are true Missouri standards, developed by Missourians, and we should be proud,” State Board President Charlie Shields said in a statement posted on the department’s website.

The standards were developed by a task force made up of parents, educators, and business leaders that met throughout last year and made recommendations last October. Several local media outlets reported that the meetings were sparsely attended and sometimes devolved into shouting matches.

The board replaced the standards at the request of legislators who criticized the common-core standards as being imposed on them by the federal government without local input. The legislature also voted in 2014 to pull the state out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment consortium.

A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.