News

Coalition Statement on the Filing of Florida’s First Piece of Anti-Common Core Legislation

August, 2013

The Florida Stop Common Core Coalition (FSCCC) is pleased to see a legislator willing to stand up to the pro-Common Core education establishment and file a bill against this system of federally supported national standards and federally funded and supervised national tests. Representative Debbie Mayfield (R-Vero Beach) pre-filed HB 25 which does the following:

Pauses implementation of the Common Core standards and tests pending public hearings and a fiscal analysis
Withdraws Florida from the PARCC testing group
Limits Common Core to English and math
Limits and prevents the state board from ceding control of standards and tests to outside entities

"The language supporting local control of education is especially important and encouraging," said Dr. Karen Effrem, president of Education Liberty Watch and a co-founder of FSCCC. "The Common Core system has numerous constitutional and legal problems. It is gratifying that one of our most important recommendations is being heeded."

"We are appreciative of this effort, especially after all attempts to have a meaningful and respectful discussion of the many issues related to the standards themselves were completely suppressed during the summit," said Randy Osborne, director of education for Heartland Research, lobbyist for Florida Eagle Forum, and a member of the governor's Education Accountability Task Force. "There are, however, so many flaws with these standards related to academic rigor, international benchmarking, and recommended curriculum that is radical and inappropriate, just to name a few, that we will continue to push for a complete withdrawal from the standards, and related tests and data collection system."

For more detailed information, please see our Policy Analysis.