ATLANTA - A Senate bill introduced Tuesday would break Georgia’s ties to an agreement to abide by national standards for schools.
Education groups oppose it.
Senate Bill 167 seeks to restore the state’s independence in designing goals for what schools should be teaching young people, and it would end all connections to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, the multistate organization that drafted what’s known as the Common Core State Standards.
The partnership is controlled and funded by companies that publish textbooks and education software wanting to market the same version nationally rather than having to tailor their materials to the requirements of individual states, according to the bill’s sponsor, Sen. William Ligon, R-Brunswick.
“This is where our standards for testing, education and basic control of curriculum would be set by interests in Washington, D.C., outside of Georgia, and not by people in Georgia who are accountable to Georgians,” he said.
According to Ligon, the national standards are untried and costly. For example, the required exams would cost six times more than what the state now budgets for student’s tests.
One of the arguments for adopting a nationwide set of standards is so that students who move from one state to another would easily fit into the new school’s lessons. Ligon said the percentage of Georgia students who move is too small to be worth the problems of having out-of-state groups say what local students should be learning.
State Superintendent of Schools John Barge has no problem with the national standards. Because much of the national plan is based on Georgia’s previous curriculum and Georgia experts helped draft, teachers here would need few adjustments to make the switch, Barge said.
“These standards are clearer and more focused and help students get the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and careers,” he said.
The consistent expectations are portable across state lines and give Georgia the ability to compare the performance of its students with those in other states, Barge said.
They will allow Georgia teachers to share ideas with colleagues in other states, and the standardized textbooks could wind up being cheaper, he said.
Objections to the standards like Ligon’s are based on misconceptions, said Steve Dolinger, president of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, a spinoff of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
“Our concern is around the high level of inaccurate information circulating about the Common Core,” Dolinger said. “They are not a national curriculum, and these are not standards decided on by the federal government.”
Calvine Rollins, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, sees good and bad in the national standards.
“It is always good for state curriculums to be aligned with the national curriculum standards, but it would mean that each state will forfeit an opportunity to provide the flexibility necessary for its state and students,” she said.
Ligon expects to get a public hearing for his bill in a Senate committee but has no assurances the committee will ever vote on it. He’s talked to Gov. Nathan Deal about it, too, but hasn’t gotten any promises from him either.