BENTONVILLE -- A crowd made up largely of educators spoke mostly in favor of Common Core education standards during a public forum on the subject Thursday.
Karen Hearth, a Rogers High School math teacher, was one of about two dozen people who addressed members of the Governor's Council on Common Core Review. The new standards promote a deeper understanding of subject material than past standards did and are preparing students better than ever for college and a career, she said.
Forum attendees
Those members of the Governor’s Council on Common Core Review attending Thursday’s public forum included:
Tim Griffin, lieutenant governor
Mike Luttrell, Springdale School Board president
Jonathon Guthrie, principal of Bentonville’s Lincoln Junior High School
Cindy Allen, teacher at Fort Smith’s Chaffin Junior High School
Gary Rhinehart, principal of Scranton Elementary
Luke Van De Walle, chief academic officer at KIPP Delta Public School
Jason Williamson, assistant principal at Nashville Junior High School
Source: Staff report
"The standards are absolutely necessary," Hearth said, a comment met with heavy applause.
The forum was the fourth in a series of nine such events scheduled at various locations across the state to gather the public's input on Common Core. The 17-member council will use that input and more gathered during hearings in Little Rock to help form recommendations to the governor this summer about the ongoing use of the sometimes controversial state standards.
Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, the council's chairman, attended Thursday's forum along with six council members.
"This really is about listening," Griffin told the audience of more than 100 people gathered at the public library.
The kindergarten- through 12th-grade standards in math and English/language arts were adopted in 2010 by the Arkansas Board of Education. Common Core is the first set of standards in the nation's history common to most of the 50 states.
Hearth said she's had three students transfer into her classes from other states this school year, all from states that also follow Common Core; because of that, none of the three kids were behind in her classes, she said.
Shannon Dingman, an associate professor of math at the University of Arkansas, said he's impressed by the math concepts his 6-year-old daughter has learned in school already.
Bentonville High School math teachers Kyle Smith and Kimmery Kobe gave a joint presentation on their observations of Common Core's effects. Their students taught under the new Common Core standards are performing significantly better on tests compared to students who learned under the old standards, even though the current assessment tool is much more difficult, they said.
Tara Nutt, a seventh-grade literacy teacher, said students coming into her classroom are better prepared than they've been before, so she doesn't have to review old material with them. She's also noticed a "radical difference" in student engagement, she said.
Randy Alexander, a former state legislator from Springdale, gave the most critical comments on Common Core at Thursday's forum. He expressed concern about the assessment tool connected with Common Core, called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
"I have a big problem with PARCC," Alexander said. "I know it takes a lot of time, and it's time I'd rather see our teachers use to teach."
When visiting people at their homes during his campaigns for office, Alexander said if he met a teacher, "I didn't hear anything positive about Common Core."
Forty-six states initially adopted Common Core; since then, seven of those states have dropped it, Alexander said.
"There's a lot of buyer's remorse," he said.
Griffin occasionally shared comments of his own. At one point he responded to an audience member's criticism of his comments from a previous meeting in which he said he didn't care how much time teachers had invested in preparing for Common Core.
"My point is, you don't continue going down down a path if, hypothetically, you are on the wrong path," Griffin said. "I just want to clarify that."
Several audience members addressed criticism Common Core standards are not developmentally appropriate. Leandra Cleveland, a Bentonville School District math specialist, said she had solicited input from some Bentonville teachers and found no serious concerns about how developmentally appropriate the standards are.
Griffin said there is "true disagreement" on that issue across the state, but added, "This is not a sticking point for me personally."
Thursday's public forum drew by far the largest crowd of the four forums held so far, said Luke Van De Walle, a council member who has attended each event.
Griffin said the overwhelmingly positive feedback on Common Core at Thursday's forum was not like what council members have heard elsewhere.
"This unanimity is not like this in other places," he said.
He also encouraged the audience to write to him or call him with additional feedback they may have.
Dave Perozek can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NWADaveP.
NW News on 05/15/2015