Dive Brief:
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Tennessee Republicans are supporting a resolution requesting that Congress rein in federal education "intrusions" like the Common Core State Standards.
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Specifically, the bill asks Congress to "end the decades of federal intrusion in state and local education policy decisions, and eliminate burdensome federal education mandates on states and local school systems."
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Over the past three years, the standards have been rolled out in Tennessee's K-12 classrooms, but have received criticism nationally from conservatives who see them as federal overreach.
Dive Insight:
This is not the first time Tennessee legislators have pushed bills against the Common Core. However, all previous attempts to get the state to opt out have failed. What has worked is a bill passed last year that delayed Common Core-aligned testing and its use in teacher evaluations.
The Common Core has been dropped by Indiana and Oklahoma, and the governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Missouri have all signed legislation asking for new standards to be drafted. All three states, however, are continuing to use the standards in the interim.
Pushback against the standards — which were technically created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers but have largely been tied to federal education grant programs by President Obama — has grown in this past year. While arguments against too much federal oversight have definitely led many of the debates against the standards, there are also other reasons people are against the Common Core.
For one, the standards are disproportionately funded by the Gates Foundation. As of November 2013, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had spent over $170 million on the creation and implementation of the Common Core. This hefty sum has had some critics worried about the implications of a private organization using money to sway public policy. Their backing of the Common Core has also contributed to claims by some that the United States is now more of an oligarchy than a democracy.
The limited implementation timeline has also been viewed by some as unrealistic, and the standards have additionally been seen as perpetuating a high-stakes testing culture. Many have argued, as well, that it's unfair that the Common Core was pushed upon states as a condition of additional funding via Race to the Top and NCLB waivers, which led many states to jump to adopt them.
And that's not even considering the issue some have with the standards' perceived quality.