It appears that dropping Common Core requirements is the trend du’jour this summer, with news last week that two more governors will withdraw their states from the nation benchmark requirements. As we reported here on Monday, Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma officially withdrew her state from the standards, asking the state to go back to a series of learning requirements established in 2010. A new set of state standards are expected to go into effect in 2016.

Just the week before, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina made the same decision in her state, officially unadopting the standards. In South Carolina, the math and English Language Arts will continue to be taught in classrooms until new state-developed standards take its place. Those standards are expected to be ready for use by the 2015 – 2016 school year. Unlike other governors who have flip-flopped support of Common Core standards, Gov. Haley has always been a vocal opponent of the national blanketing of teaching and assessments and said that she believed they should always remain at state levels.

How exactly the South Carolina standards will differ from Common Core ones remains to be seen. Indiana governor Mike Pence has taken some heat for introducing “state” standards that are basically exactly the same as Common Core ones with a different label. Gov. Haley has outlined the writing of the new standards to be sure that they at least look differently from Common Core ones — but will they be foundationally different? Or, like other states, will South Carolina’s departure from the standards prove to be simply symbolic and not actual reform?