Florida education officials survey public on replacing Common Core standards

The Florida Department of Education posted a survey Monday to gain input from educators, parents and the community on what they think would be a sound replacement for Common Core public school learning standards.

The move comes after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order last month that ordered state Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to create new public curriculum measures that would replace the Florida Standards, a set of benchmarks for what students should learn in language arts and math classes in kindergarten and grade school, like cursive in third grade and long division in sixth grade.

DeSantis, who campaigned against Common Core, gave the Department of Education a year to report back the best practice of replacing Florida Standards with the goal of focusing on the basics, such as reading, writing and mathematics, and to find a means of streamlining testing.

Now, with that goal in motion, the DeSantis administration has to figure out how best to replace Florida Standards, which will remain in place through the next school year until the new standards can be presented to the state Legislature in the 2020 session.

The state will also postpone the adoption of new math and language arts textbooks until new standards are in place.

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