The Texas Association of Business is urging the state board of education to go back to the drawing board on proposed new state academic standards in mathematics, which the 15-member state panel is expected to take up this week.
The standards are “far from in line with Texas’ goal of raising educational standards; in fact, the currently proposed standards are actually worse and less rigorous than the Common Core [State] Standards,” the association’s president and chief executive officer, Bill Hammond, wrote in an April 9 letter to board members.
The state board gave preliminary approval to the revised math standards in January, then put them out for public comment. A press release from the Texas Education Agency said the revised standards drew from the state’s existing standards “as well as math standards from Massachusetts, Minnesota, and international standards from places such as Singapore.”
Texas is one of just four states that have not adopted the common-core standards in English/language arts and math. It chose instead to craft its own.
