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Ohio legislators try to repeal
Common Core school standards
By Catherine Candisky
Thursday August 1, 2013
Just
weeks before Ohio children
return to school, conservative lawmakers introduced a last-minute bill
yesterday to block new and more-rigorous curriculum guidelines
championed by
governors and education leaders.
Opponents
of the Common Core
standards hope to throw the brakes on what they fear is a federal
takeover of
education. Rep. Andrew Thompson, R-Marietta, said local districts and
state
leaders should be the ones deciding what’s best for Ohio students.
“I’m
not sure the Common Core
standards are that great,” he said. “Beyond that, I don’t think Ohio is
just
like California or just like Montana.”
In
Ohio, districts must be using
Common Core this fall, although many had already begun to phase in the
new
standards. Students will continue to use existing assessments this
school year
with new online PARCC testing — the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for
College and Careers — set to begin in the 2014-15 school year.
Thompson’s
legislation, House Bill
237, would repeal Ohio’s adoption of Common Core standards, prohibit
the state
Board of Education from using assessments based on the standards and
outlaw any
state entity that deals with education from collecting data on students
except
for limited administrative purposes. The bill is co-sponsored by 13
other
Republicans in the 99-member House.
If
approved, Ohio would be the
third state to thwart implementation of Common Core, which outlines
what
students in kindergarten through 12th grade should know in math and
English
language arts.
Indiana
lawmakers recently passed
legislation calling for a review, public hearings and fiscal analysis
of the
standards, and in Michigan, legislators added language to the state
budget
barring education officials from spending money to implement Common
Core or
corresponding assessments…
Read
the rest of the article at the
Columbus Dispatch
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