The learning standards known as the Common Core have been increasingly under attack from all political directions (left, right), and the most recent assault comes from Georgia, where a July 30 committee meeting brought legislators, parents, and educators together, Savannah Now reports.
“This committee, as I told all of you, has no predetermined destination,” the paper quoted the state’s House speaker, David Ralston, who led the meeting of a temporary committee established to take a closer look at the Common Core in Georgia.
Deputy Superintendent Martha Reichrath said at the meeting that there was no controversy in 2010 when the Georgia Board of Education adopted Common Core for math and English language arts because about 85 percent of the new standards came from Georgia’s existing standards. “We were very comfortable with it because most of the standards looked just like ours,” she was quoted as saying.
From Common Core critics, the panel heard that the standards are less stringent than the state’s standards were before 2010 and that family values will be undermined because of the less local and more national scope of reading texts selected for Common Core lessons.
State Superintendent John Barge told the committee that schools may receive less than 10 percent of their revenue from the federal government, but the state Department of Education receives about 60 percent of its budget from Washington, Savannah Now reported.
The panel is expected to issue its report in December, after three whole-day meetings over the next few months, at which members of the public can express their support for or opposition to the Common Core State Standards.
