Jan. 24, 2020 - From the Tampa Bay Times
Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the creation of new academic standards on Friday, a year after he directed the state to root out all “vestiges of Common Core” and change the way Florida’s students learn.
“Today we’re announcing that mission has been accomplished,” he said at a news conference in Naples. “It goes beyond Common Core to embrace common sense.”
State standards are benchmarks that dictate what students must know by the end of each grade level, and how courses are taught are shaped around those goals.
Common Core refers to a set of standards first proposed by the National Governors Association that became the foundation for Florida’s existing standards. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was a champion of the idea and was a driving force in the state’s early embrace of the standards.
But since its initial adoption by 45 states in 2010 (the number is now lower), Common Core has come under fire from conservatives who claimed it was a federal mandate driving what to teach and test in schools.
The new standards will be called the BEST Standards, which stands for the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. Although the standards themselves were not made publicly available on Friday — DeSantis promised they would be online in a week — the Florida Department of Education released summary documents that outline some of the major changes ahead.
