On Monday, the Mississippi Department of Education announced the opening of a new online forum designed to gather public input and on the English Language Arts and Mathematics standards.
The Mississippi College-and Career-Ready Standards Feedback Forum is open now through September 15, according to a release from MDE.
MDE has opened the forum in hopes of receiving helpful feedback. The forum provides a perfect opportunity for parents or teachers to make suggestions on ways to improve or build on current standards.
“While the public had opportunity to provide feedback during the standards adoption process, the Mississippi College- and Career-Ready Standards Feedback Forum will give teachers, parents and others who are interested the chance to perfect the standards based on their experiences over the last several years,” said Dr. Carey Wright, state superintendent of education, in the release.
Mississippi teachers and higher education representatives will evaluate all comments left on the forum. There will also be a team of content specialists in Math and Language Arts reviewing the feedback, the release states.
After all the comments are reviewed, the team will submit their recommendations to MDE for its consideration in December. Any changes the board approves will not go into effect until the 2016-2017 school year.
“This process does exactly what the board had requested: provide a venue for any stakeholders to provide recommendations on how we can build upon the current rigorous standards we have as we continue to move the state forward with high standards of learning,” said Dr. John Kelly, board chairman in the release.
An individual participating in the forum will be asked to provide some general information including whether they are a parent, teacher or business professional.
Standards are categorized by subject and grade level. After participants have read the grade-level standard, there are several options provided for input. There is also an option to change the actual wording of a standard, or completely rewrite the standard, the release states.
The forum will be open until September 15, and participants may revisit it more than once. After September 15 all comments submitted to the forum will be published online.
The forum is available at http://mississippi.statestandards.com/.