Gov. Bill Haslam appears to have quietly signed a bill to review and replace the controversial Common Core State Standards in Tennessee.

The bill, which passed through the Tennessee General Assembly last month, requires the state's board of education to create two committees – composed of representatives from both higher education and K-12 schools – that will respectively focus on the review of current English and math standards and the development of new ones. The committees will be required to recommend new standards to be fully implemented by the 2017-18 school year.

According to the website of the state General Assembly, Haslam signed the measure on Monday.



It's unclear whether the process set out by the new law will result in a significant step away from Common Core, or if it will represent a rebranding with minor tweaks. Tennessee school superintendents in February sent state lawmakers a letter backing Common Core, although support for the standards has been waning among teachers – a September survey showed most Tennessee teachers now oppose Common Core.

Tennessee has taken several steps to move away from the standards in the last year. In May 2014, Haslam, a Republican, signed a bill that would delay using a Common Core-aligned standardized test for one year. Haslam in October also initiated his own public review of the standards.

"One thing we've all agreed on is the importance of high standards in Tennessee," the governor said in October. "This discussion is about making sure we have the best possible standards as we continue to push ahead on the historic progress we're making in academic achievement."



Haslam's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new law.

Several other states have taken middle-of-the-road approaches when it comes to Common Core, attempting to put distance between politically pressured state leaders and the standards while not ditching them entirely. Governors in Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey and Utah last summer all took actions that allowed for a review of the standards.

Only three states – Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina – have officially repealed the standards. Common Core opponents, though, have criticized Indiana's actions, saying new standards adopted by the state are too similar to Common Core.

David Mansouri, executive vice president of the Tennessee-based State Collaborative on Reforming Education, says the state's approach gives teachers and students stability by setting out a lengthy transition period from the old to new standards.



"This bill lays out a path of review and refinement that could lead to standards just as high as or higher than Tennessee's current standards," Mansouri says. "By comparison, a bill that proposed to repeal Common Core and roll back to old lower standards failed in committee, and another bill that would have allowed school districts to pick their own standards, even if inferior, didn't advance."

If Tennessee, which adopted Common Core in 2010, does end up moving substantially away from the standards, it could be a blow for the Common Core movement going forward, says Kaylan Connally, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation.