Thursday, July 24, 2014

Common Core Retreat


Two More Governors Turning Against Common Core, Posted on July 20, 2014 Written by Freedomoutpost.com
Two more state gov­er­nors have hopped on the anti-Common Core band­wagon, urg­ing either a sec­ond look at it or push­ing for out­right repeal.
Gov. Gary Her­bert of Utah ordered his attor­ney gen­eral to con­duct a review of the con­tro­ver­sial multi-state edu­ca­tion stan­dards Thurs­day, while Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walker announced that he wants the state’s leg­is­la­ture to repeal the stan­dards when it recon­venes next January.
 “Today, I call on the mem­bers of the state Leg­is­la­ture to pass a bill in early Jan­u­ary to repeal Com­mon Core and replace it with stan­dards set by peo­ple in Wis­con­sin,” Walker said in a state­ment reported by the Mil­wau­kee Journal-Sentinel on Thurs­day. His open oppo­si­tion is a step up from the past. In Jan­u­ary he said that the stan­dards war­ranted reex­am­i­na­tion, but oth­er­wise Walker has said lit­tle about Com­mon Core at all.
A bill was intro­duced this past year seek­ing to pull Wis­con­sin out of Com­mon Core, but failed after gain­ing almost no trac­tion in the leg­is­la­ture. If Walker is suc­cess­fully reelected in Novem­ber, his newly expressed sup­port could pro­vide a repeal push with much greater momentum.
Walker’s announce­ment, how­ever, also high­lighted con­tin­u­ing inter­nal divi­sions within the Repub­li­can Party on edu­ca­tion pol­icy. State Super­in­ten­dent Tony Evers com­plained that Walker’s state­ments made the state’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem appear unsta­ble and chaotic, while state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Kestell said Walker’s state­ments were purely polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing in an elec­tion year.
“The idea that they’d just be able to replace the stan­dards at the begin­ning of the leg­isla­tive ses­sion is absurd,” Kestell told the Journal-Sentinel.
Herbert’s announce­ment was less dra­matic than Walker’s, with the focus being on giv­ing Com­mon Core a sec­ond look rather than imme­di­ately seek­ing its repeal. He said Attor­ney Gen­eral Sean Reyes would review the stan­dards to make sure they did not inor­di­nately sur­ren­der Utah’s con­trol over it’s own edu­ca­tion system.
Her­bert also announced that a new web­site will allow Utah cit­i­zens to leave com­plaints about Com­mon Core for the governor’s office, and also said he is cre­at­ing a spe­cial com­mit­tee of pol­icy experts who will review the stan­dards’ appro­pri­ate­ness from a higher edu­ca­tion per­spec­tive. That review, he said, could result in any num­ber of pos­si­ble recommendations.
“I don’t want to pre­sup­pose the out­come of this review, but I want to empha­size that Dr. Kendell and his team of experts may in fact rec­om­mend some stan­dards be removed, some stan­dards might be made more rig­or­ous and some stan­dards might not be changed at all,” Her­bert said dur­ing a speech Thursday.
Momen­tum has recently been build­ing against Com­mon Core, par­tic­u­larly on the right. South Car­olina, Indi­ana and Okla­homa have dropped the stan­dards com­pletely this year, while Mis­souri and North Car­olina have passed bills that keep the stan­dards in place for now, but estab­lish com­mis­sions with the power to change them.
Her­bert said that he was partly moti­vated by a hope that a detailed review could reduce ongo­ing feud­ing between Com­mon Core sup­port­ers, who describe the stan­dards as merely broad goals that leave sub­stan­tial con­trol with local school dis­tricts, and oppo­nents who describe the stan­dards as a fed­eral takeover of education.
“What­ever has been done in the past has not resolved the dis­pute,” Her­bert said. “There’s too much ani­mus out there with the groups on all sides of the issue and it’s just time for us to kind of push the pause but­ton and say, ‘Let’s reeval­u­ate, let’s ascer­tain that we have Utah standards.’”

Related Posts

at

No comments:

Post a Comment