Vidalia — The request of the Concordia Parish School Board to have more time to implement the new Common Core standards could become a reality next month.

Louisiana’s education superintendent John White proposed a two-year delay Thursday for the consequences from toughened education standards on school grades, teacher evaluations and student promotion in public schools.

The Common Core State Standards are a more rigorous set of grade-level benchmarks adopted by 45 states for what students should learn in reading, writing and math.

White is suggesting the raising of accountability standards — like grading of students, schools and teachers — to match the Common Core shouldn’t start until 2015, with a slow adjustment to toughen the school grades set to phase in through 2025.

White’s proposal will be considered by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education next month.

“If we want Louisiana jobs to go to Louisiana graduates, we have to raise expectations for students,” White said during a presentation Thursday. “I have traveled the state seeking the input of educators and parents on how best to do this, and I believe that providing more time for educators, parents and students to learn these new expectations is critical to achieving that objective.”

Concordia Parish Superintendent Paul Nelson said he was thrilled to hear White was listening to suggestions from districts across the state asking for more time to implement the more rigorous standards.

“We have been concerned about the timeline and lack of transition time to the Common Core for some time,” Nelson said. “We believe these steps are positive ones and ones that will benefit our teachers and students.”

One way the standards have changed would be not to ask a third grader what the capital of Louisiana is, but why Baton Rouge is a good location for the state capital.

Those types of questions require students know the location of the capital and geography and political history.

“Our teachers and administrators are very supportive of the Common Core State Standards, but they need time to transition to them,” Nelson said. “There are many moving parts to our curriculum, and some things cannot be done over night.

“This time will be welcomed by teachers and principals all over the district.”

The time, Nelson said, will help the district identify and lessen any knowledge gaps that will be created with the shift in curriculum.

The math skills, for example, that were taught at the seventh-grade level should now be taught at the fifth-grade level.

“It means the teachers have to not only incorporate their grade-level skills into his or her instruction, but also those of other grade levels that were missed because of the lack of transition time,” Nelson said. “We have to be careful not to have gaps in our instruction, because a student and his or her test scores will suffer as a result of it.

“This additional time will greatly help us ensure our students get the skills they need in order to be successful.”

Other changes proposed by White Thursday include:

4Tests taken by students in 2015 will be the baseline for slowly raising the bar for how schools are graded over a 10-year period. Public schools will be graded on a curve in 2014 and 2015, so that the same number of schools will be rated at the A, B and C level through 2015.

4New tests planned for 2015 will be taken by students in grades third through eighth, but not students in high school. Students in third and fourth grades will take the tests on paper, and the older students will take computerized tests. Schools will be eligible for one-year waivers on computerized testing if they don’t have the technology.

4Teachers won’t be judged based on growth in student achievement on standardized tests for 2014 and 2015.

Their evaluations instead will rely on other information and scoring.

4Local school districts can give promotion waivers to fourth-grade students even if they don’t pass the standardized testing requirements in 2014 and 2015 if the districts feel students are showing progress.

Meanwhile, eighth-graders who don’t pass the standardized testing requirements during that time can advance to high school and take remedial classes there.

White also agreed to provide curriculum guidelines to school systems after complaints that districts were left on their own to determine what they should be teaching to meet the standards.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.