The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is moving forward with plans to fully implement new standards for math, English and language arts. This spring, more than 360 public schools are taking part in a pilot program to test out a new assessment system for kids in grades 3 through 11. DESE spokeswoman Sarah Potter says Missouri adopted the new standards back in 2010.
“We’ve been slowly implementing that," said Potter. "The school districts have been changing over curriculum, rewriting curriculum, and adapting to these new standards, and we’re gonna start testing for them officially in the 2014-2015 school year.”
Meanwhile, there’s a turf war between DESE and the legislature over who has the authority to implement curriculum standards. There’s a bill in the Missouri House that would block so-called Common Core State Standards, which the pilot program is based on. Meantime, there’s a bill in the Senate that would require a public hearing in each of the state’s congressional districts before those standards could be fully implemented.