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State Representative Buchy
Our
Pathway-Returning Control to Ohio’s Schools
The end of the school year is quickly approaching, and PARCC testing is
wrapping up. Overall, administrators are unhappy with the rollout
of PARCC because it uses too much valuable time in the classroom and
has been plagued with many technical problems. The focus should
be on learning, but teachers are forced to spend a lot of time testing
their students. There needs to be a shift of control back to the
local school districts.
I recently launched a new website that lays out “Our Pathway” to return
control back to Ohio’s schools. Eliminating PARCC and the Common
Core is no easy task, and it will take a number of bills to get the job
done. “Our Pathway” outlines legislation that is currently being
considered by the Ohio legislature to improve our children’s education.
One recent victory for “Our Pathway” was the passage of House Bill 7,
which provided Ohio’s students with safe harbor from the results of
this year’s PARCC examinations. House Bill 138 was introduced a
few weeks ago to stop the most recent round of PARCC testing.
Unfortunately, the timeline for the passage of this bill has been
difficult to meet since we are already deep into the second round of
testing. I will continue to work with my colleagues to find a way to
stop this current round of testing before it wastes anymore valuable
educational time.
Another key part of this initiative is House Bill 74. This piece
of legislation permanently limits the time students spend taking state
achievement tests and end-of-course exams, virtually eliminating
PARCC. Additionally, it provides a deadline for the review of
Common Core Standards to determine if they are truly best for Ohio’s
students.
The state biennial budget also contains important provisions for ending
PARCC. The version of the budget that was recently passed by the
House contains provisions that extend safe harbor and defund PARCC
examinations for the next two years.
Each of these bills plays a significant role in “Our Pathway” to
protect our children from PARCC and Common Core. However, there
is much work that needs to be done to shift control of our children’s
education back to local hands. If you would like to learn more
about these, or future bills regarding PARCC and the Common Core,
please visit the “Our Pathway” page at tinyurl.com/OurPathway
If you would like to stand with me in support of restoring local
control of education in Ohio, please take the “Our Pathway” Pledge by
visiting tinyurl.com/OurPathway and filling out the form at the bottom
of the page. Please give me your opinion on this topic and others in
the news this month by completing an online survey at
tinyurl.com/buchymay2015
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