A new standard in learning for Missouri students

New K-12 standards include change to when state history is taught, addition of cursive writing

Students in Jaci Jackson’s first-grade class at Moreau Heights raise their hands to volunteer for an activity while visiting high school students in a Project Lead The Way class at Nichols Career Center in Jefferson City.
Students in Jaci Jackson’s first-grade class at Moreau Heights raise their hands to volunteer for an activity while visiting high school students in a Project Lead The Way class at Nichols Career Center in Jefferson City.

Now that the Missouri Learning Standards have been stripped from the Common Core label, they’ve been well received by the public even though they aren’t drastically different.

The state has been operating under English language arts and mathematics Common Core standards, which the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted in 2010. However, some lawmakers hotly opposed using Common Core and passed a bill in 2014 to review the current standards and their budget had language to defund the Smarter Balanced test associated with Common Core.

In late April, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously approved the new standards, which are intended to be rigorous and include more critical thinking.

The department drew some criticism that the new standards are too similar to Common Core, according to an Associated Press article. While the standards haven’t changed dramatically, they’re reflective of the input DESE received from teachers and work groups, said Sarah Potter, DESE spokeswoman.

“We wanted to honor the investment of time and expertise from Missouri educators and parents in the work groups by trying to stay true to the documents they created,” Potter said. “We did make adjustments based on formatting, feedback we received from the public, and missing skills from elementary grades to high school courses.”

The new standards maintain some local flair, including adding cursive back into the state standards — something that wasn’t specifically required in Common Core.

One downside to the state-created standards is that they remove a clear opportunity for Missouri to compare its test scores to other states’. Common Core was an easy way to juxtapose Missouri schools with schools in other states that also used Common Core standards, but now that pathway has been eliminated.

Missouri will have to use other measures, such as ACT testing, to compare student learning, Potter said.

“What’s done is done,” Potter said. “Our request as part of this was to make Missouri educators part of creating the new standards. We feel like they did a lot of major work and we heard from thousands of educators, so I think we’ve got a good product in the end result.”

Social studies and science were revised the most, as the state hadn’t updated those standards in roughly eight years — a few years off Missouri’s goal to revise standards every five years, Potter said. English and math were updated in 2010, so they didn’t undergo major construction.

Standards for science and social studies used to focus more on memorization of facts, but the new standards require more project-based learning.

“We’ve moved away from the drill-and-kill and teacher lecture to students actually experiencing science,” Potter said. “You may not remember that fact a year later, whereas you may remember that scientific experiment that you did because you were actually participating and learning the science.”

The standards will ask teachers to conduct more learning through scientific studies and research-based projects to engage students.

DESE also filled in holes where the previous standards didn’t lay the groundwork for material students were expected to know in the upper grade levels.

Some skill sets were shifted into lower grades, in part to increase rigor at the schools but also to keep up with education standards worldwide. Because of that, some teachers will have to introduce new material into their classes.

One of those changes will be at the elementary level, moving Missouri history from fourth grade to third grade, said Blair Oaks Superintendent Jim Jones. His staff are still reviewing the new standards to come up with a game plan for implementing them.

Larry Linthacum, Jefferson City Public Schools superintendent, said he and his teachers have not talked specifically about the swap from fourth to third grade, but he has the same questions many other people would have: are third-graders able to comprehend the material they’re learning at that age?

He said he hopes DESE weighed the pros and cons of moving Missouri history down a grade and made the adjustment because it’s best for students.

“Public education is a work in progress — not just here in Jefferson City, but everywhere,” Linthacum said. “That’s a change they deemed necessary.”

Potter said districts will not notice drastic changes with the English standards. Many of the local schools continued to teach cursive regardless of it not being a requirement. But starting next year, second- and third-graders are expected to write legibly in cursive and in print.

“There’s kind of a debate among educators whether we still need cursive writing, so the (previous) standards left it up to states and districts if they wanted to teach it,” Potter said. “There’s really a debate because if you look at what adults use now, it’s sort of half cursive and half script.

“I think in 20 years or so we won’t be teaching it anymore, but I don’t think everyone is quite ready for that.”

Kimberley Rodriquez, principal of Blair Oaks Elementary School, said her teachers incorporated cursive writing into their curriculum even though it wasn’t required; many schools did. At Blair Oaks, students learn to read cursive and write their names legibly in print and cursive.

Linthacum said cursive was also still being taught in JCPS elementary schools.

“One side of cursive is that we have cellphones and texting so students don’t use cursive as much, but another point is that the Second Amendment is written in cursive, and they ought to be able to read it,” Linthacum said.

“I think it’s good to have well-rounded students who can read and write in cursive.”

Even though the new standards will be implemented in 2016-17, Potter said schools won’t be tested on them for a couple more years.

It will be a tight timeline for DESE to write a new Missouri Assessment Program for spring 2018, when students will be tested on the new English and math standards.

Tests based on the new standards will be staggered to give schools more time to adjust their curricula. DESE tentatively plans to test students on the new science standards in 2019 and on social studies in 2020. In the meantime, students will be tested on the 2015-16 standards.

Some schools have been frustrated with the learning targets’ changing so frequently after the Legislature adopted Common Core then quickly dropped it, but Jones said he thinks the new standards will create consistency the state was lacking when it kept moving its target.

“First off, we expect the standards to be challenging, and they are,” he said. “Missouri isn’t a state that elevates its status by lowering its standards. We’re going to set our standards on meeting lofty standards. At this point, I’m confident the Missouri standards will create consistency moving forward.”

Linthacum said he believes DESE “vetted the process” in creating new standards. The state and his school district are always aiming to improve, which is the goal of the new standards.

“We’re not fighting it,” Linthacum said. “We want students to be college and career ready, and we want students to think critically.”

The new standards will not derail the progress JCPS has made with the International Center for Leadership in Education to create priority standards for each subject.

Editor's Note: This article has been revised. The original article incorrectly stated that the legislature voted to create new Missouri Learning Standards and incorrectly stated when Missouri adopted Common Core standards.