Farce! This is not about improving K-12 education in Wisconsin. It is all about gaining support from Tea Party conservatives and the uninformed by a governor who is promoting his national standing as a presidential nominee.
As reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on February 21, 2014, “A bill that could halt the implementation of more rigorous and nationally aligned reading and math academic standards in Wisconsin’s public schools was written for state lawmakers by Gov. Scott Walker’s staff, new documents show.
Drafting notes for the academic standards bill that’s been hotly contested this week reveal that the governor’s office initiated the proposal and tweaked it for weeks before forwarding it to senators such as Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) to introduce.
That the governor supported the bill was already known; that his office created it was not. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel received the drafts through an open records request.
If passed, the legislation would be one of the most aggressive measures taken nationally to slow or stop the Common Core State Standards.
The set of nationwide academic standards have broad support from educators and the business community in Wisconsin, though there have been some implementation challenges.
But the strongest opponents have been mostly tea party Republicans who believe the standards amount to federal intrusion in local education matters. Education experts dispute that, noting the standards were developed by state superintendents, governors and curriculum experts.
The bill introduced in the Senate this week, and a companion measure that was pulled from a vote in the Assembly Education Committee Thursday, calls for the creation of a state academic standards board that would have authority to recommend new standards for public schools in academic subjects such as math, reading and science.
The state board would be mostly made up of political appointees, and lawmakers could adopt standards the board recommended, even if the state superintendent disagreed.”
Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/standards21-b99209908z1-246343221.html#ixzz2u02zBMKG
The terrible irony is that this same politicized process was used by the Wisconsin legislature in the 1990s to write and edit the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. Those “model” standards were graded as D- and F by the Fordham Institute. These “failed” standards would become the default standards for all Wisconsin schools until the legislature issues new “Wisconsinized” standards.