There are many issues Georgia ought to address in its quest to improve schools, from narrowing the widening achievement gap between children of wealth and children of poverty to improving teacher quality and retention.
Instead, two state bodies are reviewing the role of the federal government in the Common Core State Standards. The House Study Committee on the Role of Federal Government in Education will meet today to discuss Common Core at Georgia Gwinnett College.
At its first hearing a few weeks ago, the committee heard four hours of testimony, including a parade of experts explaining what Common Core is and isn’t. (It isn’t a curriculum; Common Core sets standards for what American kids should know and be able to do at each grade. How states teach and test the standards is up to them.)
“The fact is, the Common Core State Standards were birthed out of states coming together to address a need and coming to an agreement on what are the big-ticket items that our students should know and be able to do,” said state school Superintendent John Barge. “Most people upset about the standards have never sat down and read the standards.”
That was confirmed by several questions from legislators, who appeared to not only have never read the standards, but gleaned what little they did know from chance meetings with one or two constituents at the grocery store.
House Speaker David Ralston charged the committee with separating political rhetoric from reality. That can be done in two sentences: Common Core is not a federal program or takeover, and it has the potential to improve teaching and learning in a state with a dismal track record. And even more importantly, it has the support of educators in this state — the experts in the field whose opinions should trump the grandmother in the frozen food aisle who heard somewhere that Common Core glorified communism.
These committee hearings aren’t about providing facts; they are about providing cover. Extremists in the Republican Party contend Common Core is Obamacare transferred from doctors’ waiting rooms to America’s classrooms, dressed in sensible shoes and a cardigan and carrying a pointer.
An attempt this past legislative session to gut Common Core — an attempt that seemed poised to succeed — was beaten back by an outcry from educators across the state, the front-line educators who responded in two statewide surveys they want to stick with Common Core. Even though Senate Bill 167 was defeated, the pressure to do something about Common Core persisted.
So, at the same time the House committee is holding hearings, so is the state Board of Education, including one this month in Douglasville where most of the 25 speakers endorsed the standards as a boon to students.
Those who contend President Barack Obama is the guiding force behind Common Core will never be persuaded. Former Gov. Sonny Perdue, one of the actual architects of Common Core, has urged Georgia to stay the course and reject the revisionist history of the standards.
Gwinnett Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks reminded the House committee that Perdue announced Common Core at a 2010 event at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee, one of his county’s schools.
“There was not a single individual from the U.S. Department of Education when Common Core was introduced. I saw the invitation list; there were none invited. I put that out there to say this was not something pushed down by the U.S. Department of Education; this was an initiative of the governors and the chief state school officers to really provide standards that would be across states when students moved,” said Wilbanks.
“But more than just that, this really raises not just the rigor, it raises the engagement of students to really have a true understanding of mathematics and language arts,” he said. “I contend, properly interpreted and properly taught, Common Core Standards will really engage more students regardless of their ability levels.”
