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Questions on Governor Scott's RPOF Speech on Common Core
January, 2014Governor Scott in his speech at the Republican Party of Florida Annual meeting acknowledged that there is "passion" about Common Core. He made the following assurances with our questions below each one:
- "Here's what we're going to assure: These are Florida standards, not some national standards put on Florida students. These are our standards."
Does this mean merely that the words "Common Core" will be removed from statute, the process of which was begun in the House K-12 Education Subcommittee on January 9th?
Are the people of Florida going to get real substantive changes to the standards to be unveiled on January 13th with only one day before a public hearing or just a few superficial changes that Florida could have done in 2010, leaving the bulk of the standards in place that will still align to one of the federally funded and controlled or national Common Core tests?
Are the people of Florida going to get real substantive changes to the standards to be unveiled on January 13th with only one day before a public hearing or just a few superficial changes that Florida could have done in 2010, leaving the bulk of the standards in place that will still align to one of the federally funded and controlled or national Common Core tests?
How will Florida deal with the copyright issue?
- The governor said there would also be a "'data-security bill' to make sure there is no unnecessary information collected from our students."
Will there be actual data security or will it be a deceptive attempt to pass the data mining bill from last session, authored and heavily lobbied by Jeb Bush's foundation or just rely on the severely weakened federal law FERPA?
- Governor Scott also said, "We also have legislation that codifies that curriculum is to be controlled locally. I believe we're headed in the right direction."
Does this mean that the state will no longer do statewide textbook adoption which currently requires curriculum to be Common Core aligned?
These and many other questions must be answered before we will know whether Florida will be rid of the Common Core albatross or if this is another bait and switch tactic.
