Unable to repeal Common Core, foes try sabotage
Conservative lawmakers in state after state are having difficulty rounding up votes to revoke the standards outright
The red-meat speeches at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference are likely to thunder with calls to repeal the Common Core. But out in the trenches, conservative lawmakers in state after state are running into difficulty rounding up votes to revoke the academic standards outright.
So, aided at times by unlikely allies in the teachers unions, Republican lawmakers are trying a new tactic: sabotaging, in incremental steps, the academic guidelines and the new Common Core exams rolling out this spring.
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Bills to repeal the Common Core have been introduced in 19 states so far this year, down slightly from the 22 states that considered such a step last year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. So far, they’ve fared poorly.
Common Core opponents had high hopes for rooting out the standards from Mississippi and Arizona. But in both cases, the state senates rejected repeal bills. North Dakota lawmakers killed a repeal bill earlier this month; on Tuesday, their counterparts in South Dakota did the same.
Kansas state Rep. Ron Highland, a Republican, said he’s not even sure a repeal bill will come to the floor in his deep-red state this session, much as he would like it to: “I’m not sure we have the votes, quite frankly.”
Refusing to concede defeat, Highland said he’s considering drafting a bill to curb state funding for textbooks and tests aligned to the Common Core and for the computer equipment that schools need to administer those tests online.
And the Common Core tests developed by two federally funded consortia, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced, have become a popular target in other states.
Wisconsin lawmakers are considering an effort to strip funding for the Smarter Balanced exam from the state budget and let districts pick their own assessments from a state-approved list. The New Jersey General Assembly this week overwhelmingly passed a bill to prevent the PARCC test from being used to evaluate students or teachers until 2019.
And in Colorado, where Democrats repeatedly have shot down attempts at outright repeal, Republican state Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt is pushing a bill to withdraw the state from the federally funded PARCC testing consortium in what he sees as the first step toward reclaiming local control over education.
“I’m not trying to hit a home run,” Klingenschmitt said. “I’m trying to lay down a bunt single.”
Meanwhile, teachers unions in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, Washington and elsewhere are encouraging members to support parents who want to opt their children out of the Common Core tests. The New Jersey Education Association has even launched a six-week TV and online ad campaign featuring videos of parents expressing concern — to the point of breaking down in tears — about the PARCC exam.
Yet another creative approach to undermine the Common Core has emerged in
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/unable-to-repeal-common-core-foes-try-sabotage-115522.html#ixzz3SrTc6euz
