Yesterday we told you about a move at the American Legislative Exchange Council that was designed to challenge adoption or implementation of the common standards in the states. Today we have a little more information for you.
A member of the organization’s education task force posted a comment in this blog saying that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s letter wasn’t the reason that the subcommittee tabled the model legislation. It was tabled, he said, because the subcommittee’s crowded agenda didn’t allot enough time for discussion of something as significant as the common-core standards.
Terry Stoops, an education analyst at the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank in Raleigh, N.C., told me later in a phone conversation that the sponsor of the model legislation, Jonathan Butcher, the education director of the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative think tank, agreed to table the matter until a more expansive session could be held, with input from both sides of the debate.
Stoops said a legislator who serves on the subcommittee made the motion to table the model legislation, and Butcher agreed to do so.
“Legislators had a lot of questions about common core, and there just wasn’t time to address them,” said Stoops, a private-sector member of the education task force who attended the K-12 education reform subcommittee meeting where the common-core model legislation was considered. The task force considers matters that are adopted by its various education subcommittees.
“Legislators have heard of it, but not a whole lot of states engage legislators in discussion of the common core,” said Stoops, who describes himself as a common-core opponent. “Some wanted to know more about it, because state education agencies or state boards of education didn’t give them much information, if any, on the common core.”
How many state lawmakers have questions about the common standards their states have already adopted, and what role will those questions play as states move to implement the standards?