Local Superintendent Reacts to Indiana’s Withdrawl from Common Core

 Indiana Governor Mike Pence recently signed legislation withdrawing Indiana from the Common Core math and reading standards. The Common Core is an outline on what students should be learning in those subjects.

Governor Pence said he believes the state’s students are best served by education decisions made at the state and local level. The legislature previously required the State Board of Education to draft new standards by grade.

West Central School Superintendent Charles Mellon thinks the change is frustrating.

“I think the legislators are getting too much involved and it’s becoming a political issue,” stated Mellon. “In the educational field, we’re just chasing everybody else’s whim. We prepared for what Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels wanted to do and worked for two years in doing that, mow we have something else coming along. We don’t know what we’re going to do. That’s just one of the frustrating parts with education today.”

Mellon added that schools are getting more and more mandates with no funding and corporations are adapting to changes and then more changes thwart the process.

He said while some of the preparation toward Core 40 has been positive in terms of staff collaboration, it really affects the basics of teaching.

“It’s not fair to teachers to do all of that work in preparation. We prepare kids to test and now we’re going to be testing something else. It’s very unfair and I think the people making those decisions probably do not realize the true effect it has in the classroom.”