Common Core Wars Heating up in Indiana from the Chamber of Commerce

Indiana will face a vote in the Senate to advance a bill to rid itself of Common Core.  Anngie and I were there for the testimony and rally a couple of weeks ago.  Five hundred citizens showed up at the Capitol to show their support for stopping Common Core in their state.
The reformers might be getting worried.  Below is an editorial insinuating taxpayers frankly don’t understand why private corporations should be given the authority to own the copyright to the standards and assessments used in teaching their children…and if a parent or a school district should find some of these items objectionable, they have no due process to stop using it in their schools.  From indianabarrister.com and Indiana Chamber: Show Common Sense on Common Core:

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It’s a bit amazing, but right now – with a Republican supermajority –
we are fighting hard to keep in place a major component of the K-12
education reforms that former Gov. Mitch Daniels and former
Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett implemented here
and have helped lead around the nation. The state’s new Common Core
academic standards are under assault from a contingent of out-of-state
interest groups, conservative Republican legislators and tea party
activists.

Senate Bill 193, sponsored by Sen. Scott Schneider (R-Indianapolis),
would effectively overturn the state’s 2010 approval and subsequent
participation in the Common Core academic standards. Forty-six states
have adopted the Common Core program, an initiative to set strong
standards for what students learn at each grade level in math and
English that is also designed to get students ready for college and
careers. The program is already being implemented in Indiana and
enjoying unusual bipartisan and broad-based support, including among
classroom teachers.

Beginning in 2009, governors and state commissioners of education
from 48 states committed to developing common K-12 benchmarks in math
and English. They sought significantly more rigorous academic standards
and testing programs for their states. Common Core opponents charge it
is designed to “nationalize” academic standards and testing, citing the
Obama administration’s support for this state-led effort as evidence of
sinister intent.

This is nonsense. Common Core was and still is a state-led
effort. Indiana was one of the early states to approve and implement the
program. In fact, Gov. Daniels and Dr. Bennett were key leaders in
helping states around the country – now 46 states – to approve the
program. Common Core opponents know that if they can tear it down in
Indiana first, the foundation will begin to crumble across the country.

 Is Common Core perfect? Of course not; no initiative is. The Indiana
Chamber of Commerce has acknowledged that some of the critics – at least
those focused on contents of the standards rather than hysterical
exaggerations of federal intrusion – may have some legitimate concerns
that should be evaluated.  But those concerns, if legitimate, can be
offset by the flexibilities contained within the Common Core and through
corresponding adoptions of rigorous assessments and accountability
measures. There is no need to overreact.

Rather than subjecting our academic standards to the politicized
environment of the Legislature, such determinations and oversight need
to remain in the hands of our state’s education leaders, including the
Department of Education, the Education Roundtable and the State Board of
Education. Ironically, while critics of the Common Core have heaped
praise on Indiana’s previous state standards, they consistently overlook
the fact that those highly-rated standards were adopted through the
same process as was conducted when Indiana adopted the Common Core, and
that the Legislature played no role in those adoptions.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz has urged the
Legislature to allow Common Core implementation to continue but has
promised to conduct a review of the standards that would be completed by
the end of 2013. This is a reasonable, welcome recommendation, as such a
review would be helpful for determining how best to use the
flexibilities that are allowed in the multi-state agreement.

Senate Bill 193 is scheduled to be considered and possibly voted on
by the Senate Education and Career Development Committee on Wednesday,
February 6 . With Republican legislators split on the measure, a close
vote is expected. Indiana simply cannot afford to start going backwards
on education. Let’s hope common sense prevails on the Common Core
standards.

For more information about Common Core, contact Derek Redelman,
vice president for education and workforce development policy, at [email protected] / (317) 264-6880 or visit http://stand.org/indiana/common-core.

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My response to the editorial?

As the US Chamber of Commerce signed on to the support of the standards (even before they were written), expect to see more editorials from individual state/local chambers in those states where there is growing opposition and questioning of the wisdom of such action.

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