While the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition is very grateful for Governor Scott’s willingness to hear the concerns of Florida parents and citizens about the many problems with the Common Core system of national standards, tests, and data collection, it is important to understand their implications. After careful analysis, here is a list of what these documents do and do not accomplish:
What Governor Scott’s executive order and letters DO accomplish-
- Acknowledge concerns about federal overreach
- Acknowledge concerns about teaching, testing and data collection of psychological attitudes and beliefs
- Withdraw Florida as fiscal agent for PARCC
- Orders an open process for selecting a new test
- Seek to gather public input about the standards via 3 hearings and public comments
- Show some willingness to change the standards to make them Florida’s standards
- Rejects the official CCSS text examples
What Governor Scott’s executive order and letters DO NOT accomplish –
- Stop the implementation of the Common Core standards
- Prevent changes to the standards from being only superficial within the allowed 15% that Florida previously declined
- Withdraw Florida from the PARCC consortium as stated by Commissioner Stewart
- Prevent PARCC from being still considered as Florida’s test as stated by Commissioner Stewart
- Prevent Florida’s test from being based on national Common Core standards
- Stop or prohibit the teaching, testing and data collection of psychological attitudes & attributes
- Limit the scope of data collection on students, families, and teachers
Comments:
Here is the trickery Governors (especially those up for election in 2014) are trying to pull and the reason I say we cannot agree to compromise. We must demand that Common Core and all its ugly tentacles be repealed. Doesn’t anyone find it strange that all of sudden many of the Governor’s are having a come to Jesus moment about Common Core? But has 1 Governor actually repealed Common Core? No they have not. They are playing games and sadly a lot of citizens are falling for the new shade of lipstick they are painting on the same dirty pig.
KB
