By Quin Hillyer at al.com and the Mobile Press-Register:
Governor Bentley should listen to grassroots Alabamans and fulfill his 2014 campaign promise – which echoed his own pledges made several years earlier – to repeal Common Core. At least as importantly, it is imperative that he chooses a new state school superintendent who stands for excellence apart from any reliance on the flawed Common Core standards.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
I’ve written extensively about the various ills of Common Core. Early returns bear out my warnings. Under Alabama’s former standards, our state had risen to 25thin The National Assessment of Educational Progress by 2011 – but since agreeing to affiliate with the Core in a late 2010 vote (effective the next year), we have fallen back to dead last. A few years of the Core may not be entirely to blame, but the drop has been so precipitous, and so entirely confluent with the adoption of the Core, that there surely is at least some correlation.
The state Board of Education (SBOE) ought to repeal its 2010 resolution affiliating us with the Core, and start the hard work of replacing it.
To do so in a wise and productive fashion, though, board members will need to rely on a superintendent who is not wedded to the Core….
The full column is here.
