Dive Brief:
- Members of the Washington state Democratic Party approved a proposal that says the state was unfairly pressured into adopting the Common Core State Standards.
- The resolution asks legislators to distance themselves from the national standards and instead use state-generated benchmarks.
- The resolution is similar to one passed by Republicans a year ago.
Dive Insight:
Looks like Washington state's opposition to the Common Core is bipartisan, given the fact that Republicans expressed similar sentiments only a year ago. For both parties, the issue comes down to what they believe to be too much federal control.
The state has an interesting relationship with the District of Columbia and federal regulations. As a state that didn't receive a coveted No Child Left Behind waiver, it saw massive "drops" in the rankings of its schools — with many districts deemed failing when put in the context of NCLB's rigorous but somewhat-unreasonable Adequate Yearly Progress goals. In August, over 1,900 of the state's 2,200 schools were labeled as failing.
With that in mind, it's not hard to see how the state's lawmakers on both sides of the aisle soured on Common Core, given that its adoption has been cited as a requirement of the waivers.