Response to today’s conversation

Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog debated Senate Bill 167, which retreats from the Common Core State Standards by halting the adoption of science and social studies standards and requiring a review committee, made up largely of parents, to review the already approved math and reading standards. Due for a vote in the House Education Committee on Wednesday, the bill also bans tests in the state that reflect national standards. Here is a sampling of comments under each poster’s chosen screen name:

GaParent: The problem with this bill is not one of liking or disliking Common Core. Rather, it's how they are going to change things, who gets to sit at the table (nine our of 17 review council members are parents or grandparents? Only three are teachers?), and who gets to make these decisions. They are effectively throwing the baby out with the bath water, without talking with the experts about what's going on now in classrooms.

Scrappy: Once again, Georgia legislators prove they are a bunch of tow-the-party-line hacks. Schools are not allowed to use anything developed outside the state? How completely ludicrous! That is not states rights, that is states isolationism. And it is flat-out stupid, no other word for it.

Grob: Every time elected officials want to take the non-elected to task for their job, people go into "union" mode and circle the wagons. For too long, educators have aligned themselves against parents and students.

Atlcitizen: Common Core is a joke. It is brainwashing kids to think exactly as the government tells them. In concert with the regulations Obama is placing on the media, we will soon be living in Orwell's 1984.

Bu2: What's most disturbing about this is that 90 percent of the people opposed to Common Core don't have a clue what it does. Every now and then, you will see informed opposition, but most are opposed to things it doesn't do. Of course, that is not just a Georgia thing. Nationally, we have this Internet- and mommy-blogger-driven hysteria. The Obama administration claims to be driven by science, but comes out with these new food labels that scientists didn't propose, but come straight out of mommy bloggers and are designed by "experts" like the first lady and her chef. Idiocy permeates the political process.

OSG: What a way to develop a strong, ignorant but willing political base. Take away education and only allow topics to be taught by people from Georgia, thus limiting their competitiveness with the world. But if you have money, send your kids to private school, where they will be able to compete with the world around them. Georgians are being taken, and they are too dumb and too politically blinded and ignorant to see what is happening — all in the name of "states rights." Wow.