News
Galvano Pulls Senate Bill Intended to Impose Common Core on Private Schools
March, 2014Congratulations! Our warning and your phone calls have combined to help put a major roadblock in Senator Gaetz' plan to impose Common Core tests and therefore the standards on private schools. As we just reported, the House Choice and Innovation Subcommittee defeated an amendment on Mach 18th that would have required voucher students in private schools to take the state tests, which are about to be Common Core tests based on 99.2% of the Common Core (Florida) Standards. On Thursday, March 20th the senate author, Bill Galvano (R - Bradenton) pulled the senate bill from consideration in the senate.
Here are his views as reported in the Tampa Tribune:
"The bill has been withdrawn. It's continuing to move in the House, so I guess the issue is still in play in that regard," he said. "On this side, we had a bill we were trying to formulate and get in the right posture ... Not having a comfort level on the framework for the accountability piece, we've withdrawn it from further consideration." (Emphasis added).
"The accountability piece" means the tests, now to be supplied by the psychological testing firm AIR. We take this as an admission that the effort to require the state Common Core tests was going over like a lead balloon. Given the political toxicity of Common Core and the news about AIR's history of psychological testing and promoting controversial social issues creating outrage in private schools, and the effect it is having on the governor's re-election campaign, we suspect that Galvano was asked or ordered to pull the bill.
The article reports that "it's unlikely that state lawmakers will expand the [voucher] program during the 2014 legislative session."
This significant delay of the assault on private schools as an escape hatch for students trying to escape Common Core is indeed good news, but we will need to keep vigilant, Even more importantly, however, we need to do something to protect children in public schools from the academically inferior, psychologically manipulative, and developmentally inappropriate Common Core (Lipstick on a Pig Florida) standards and tests. That means working on the governor and the legislature to get hearings on HB 25/SB 1316 or for the governor to get us out of Common Core via executive action.
Thank you and stay tuned!
