Tennessee looks to new standards

Just as Tennessee public schools prepare to implement new statewide standards this fall, education officials announced this week that curriculum and testing will change again in a couple of years to meet international benchmarks.

Gov. Phil Bredesen and Tennessee Education Commissioner Tim Webb joined with officials in 49 other states and U.S. territories to create common sets of graduation, college-ready and grade-by-grade standards that more closely align with international standards.

Because Tennessee’s standards already have been revamped, officials did not expect a huge change with the new common standards, said Rachel Woods, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

“If we’ve already made such a dramatic leap, it won’t be such a huge step forward,” she said. “We’ll be in a very good place. There will be changes, but it won’t be dramatic like it is now.”

Although the work to compile the standards will be completed this year, the Tennessee Board of Education must approve the standards, so any additional curriculum changes likely would not show up in schools for at least two years, Ms. Woods said.

“The adoption by states could be a couple of years out — (Tennessee has) been implementing our own new state standards for the past two years,” she said.

Once the Common Core State Standards Initiative creates the standards, states can voluntarily adopt them, Ms. Woods said. States then can include additional standards, as long as the common core makes up at least 85 percent of the state’s English and math standards.

Dr. Webb said some of the same organizations that worked on the Tennessee Diploma Project also will be working on the new common standards. They have assured Tennessee officials that much of the new requirements will align with the state’s previous work, he said.

“The work we’ve already done won’t be thrown out,” he said. “We don’t want to overwhelm our practitioners with something new right out of the box. We may wind up to where there’s little, if any, additional work that needs to be done.”