The House Education Committee dealt a death blow last week to a controversial anti-national standards bill that had a whole lot of crazy in it, including handing the job of reviewing and revising Georgia’s k-12 academic standards to parents and grandparents rather than teachers.
However, the craziest thing of all was that Senate Bill 167 — which had the support of some social conservatives — glided through the Senate, won the blessing of Gov. Nathan Deal and was expected to sail through the House until the news media and education leaders sounded an alarm.
Parents and teachers who read SB 167 rose up in disbelief and dismay that the Legislature would consider a sweeping bill that dumped the Common Core State Standards championed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, outlawed tests that embodied any national standards, and imposed such extreme restraints on technology that online schools warned they’d have to shut their doors. Hundreds protested in emails and phone calls to lawmakers and at a four-hour House hearing.
In one of the fastest reversals on record, Deal went from saying his office had helped draft SB 167 and that it represented a “very good compromise bill that allows us to go forward and doesn’t take the rug out from under the teachers,” to explaining two days later, “This is not a finished product at this point in time, so I think until we see what the finished product is, it’s premature.”
In two statewide surveys, 75 percent of Georgia teachers endorsed Common Core because they understand the value in introducing higher-order thinking skills. The ultimate intent of Common Core is to create independent learners: students who can read and learn from complex texts, who can not only subtract and divide but understand why they borrow the 1 or carry the 2.
The defeat of the anti-Core bill speaks to the power of voters. Unfortunately, that the bill was ever in serious contention speaks to the lack of respect for teachers.
SB 167 sought to create an appointed council of nine parents and/or grandparents to study and revise the standards. The sponsor of the bill, Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick, wanted no teachers on the review council. In a floor amendment, the Senate added three teachers to the mix.
One of the few House Education members to endorse Ligon’s bill was state Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, who works in engineering and architecture. Would the architects with whom Setzler works want their professional standards set by people whose only experience was living in a house? I’ve lived in several houses and once hung curtains; does that qualify me to set the standards under which architects and engineers run their projects?
There were other elements of SB 167 that made me wonder whether there were hidden cameras and a coiffed host ready to pop out and announce the entire state of Georgia had just been pranked.
During a standing-room-only House hearing on the bill, state Rep. Amy Carter, R-Valdosta, asked Ligon to cite three standards with which he disagreed. He could not come up with even one; he told Carter he’d look and get back to her.
Ligon’s inability to name a single standard lit up Twitter and Facebook. I figured he’d never allow himself to be caught so unprepared again. When Carter asked Ligon the same question a week later, I was certain the audience was about to witness a detailed dissection.
Nope. Ligon again told Carter he couldn’t come up with one at that moment, but pointed her to a folder of published critiques from others.
The premise of SB 167 is that the Common Core math and reading standards now in place in Georgia classrooms are sub-par. That’s been Ligon’s assertion to legislative committees for months. Yet he never bothered to dig deep enough to unearth one standard he could trumpet as deficient.
And apparently he’d never been asked before — making me wonder if the entire Georgia Senate wasn’t under the influence of bourbon-laced barbecue when it passed SB 167 last month.
