SANDPOINT - Asked about the new Idaho Common Core testing standards, Lake Pend Oreille School District Superintendent Shawn Woodward will tell you the shift is a "good thing." It puts more emphasis on evidence-based writing, citing primary sources, and applied mathematics. The change won't come without some potential growing pains, however.

Although Idaho Common Core has been taught for the past three years, 2015 is the first year students will actually test to the new standards. The results will be published this spring, after the spring assessment is completed and graded.

A parent himself, with school-aged children in the district he manages, Woodward noted the new standards emphasize teaching students to write so they support their opinions - citing original, "primary source documents" like the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, not history books, as evidence - rather than simply having an opinion. So rather than relying on someone else's interpretation, students form their own opinions.

"It's much more of an evidence-based approach rather than a feeling-based approach," he said.

And new math standards emphasize solving real-world problems, rather than what Woodward termed "procedural knowledge," such as simply learning math principles in a vacuum.

"That's something that's definitely been missing," he said. "Now students are going to have to prove they can do all of that on a state assessment."

The first round of test results are expected to be lower than past scores, however, based on the transitional testing experiences of other states.

And although LPOSD students have tested in the 85 to 90 percent range previously, the new standards have raised the bar, according to Woodward.

"It takes several years to get caught back up," he said.

Like previous standards, there is some "specificity" in teaching the new standards, but Idaho Common Core also leaves much of curriculum development responsibility to individual school districts.

"There's freedom at the local level, still, for us to pick all of our instructional materials," Woodward noted. "At the local level we still pick and choose what we're actually using with our students when it comes to curriculum."

There was, and remains, training and facilitation that needs to be accomplished, and teaching materials that need vetting. The freedom in the new standards requires teachers to "roll up their sleeves," and work together to unpack how to teach the standards. Professional development has been a big emphasis, Woodward noted, with frontline teaching staff determining how to teach to their students.

And as the new test results roll in, some adjustments to materials and curriculum may need to be made, he said. It's all part of the process.

"We expect every year we're going to do just like what was done here over the last nine years: we're going to see more kids meeting standards every single year," Woodward said. "It's just going to take time to recalibrate our system."

He contends, however, that today's students will be better prepared than those before them because of the new standards being taught.

"Going back would be a mistake. This is better for our kids."