At the fourth and final meeting of the NC General Assembly’s Common Core study committee, a bill was unveiled that will remove Common Core from the state’s statutes. The bill also calls for a return to North Carolina Standard Course of Study, which will be developed by an academic review commission.
The draft bill is titled “Replace Common Core To Meet NC’s Needs”. The draft number is TLza-24. Update: Here is the link to the report and draft bill.
Chairman Holloway stated this bill is not intended to just rename Common Core but instead, replace it. The draft bill also leaves the national testing consortiums tied to the Common Core (PARCC, SBAC) in favor of a new assessment instrument to assess student achievement. In addition, the draft bill states, “The State Board shall not acquire or implement such an assessment instrument without the enactment of legislation by the General Assembly authorizing the purchase.”
The opening language:
A Bill to be entitled an Act to replace the Common Core by exercising North Carolina’s proper Constitutional authority over all academic standards and to ensure that standards are robust and appropriate, and that they enable students to succeed academically and professionally, as recommended by the legislative research commission study committee on the Common Core State Standards.
The findings of the committee given out at the last meeting today include:
1. Local state boards of education, school administrators, teachers, and instructional personnel should continue to adopt and implement locally adopted curricula for appropriate instruction of each child in each subject area.
2. The SBE and local boards of education shall continue to communicate with parents of public school students and other stakeholder groups to increase the transparency of standard and curricular options, revisions, implementation and evaluation.
3. The SBE continue to review, revise, and refine the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, especially in the areas of mathematics and in English Language Arts, according to current SBE policy.
4. To assist the SBE in implementing Recommendation 3, thre NC General Assembly establishes the Academic Standards Review Commission composed of public and legislative members. (There is attached legislation I will link when it is posted on the website for the Common Core LRC.)
5. The SBE and local boards of education shall continue to assess teachers’ needs for professional development and provide adequate and appropriate professional development that will support teachers to help every student in North Carolina’s public schools to achieve the State-determined standard course of study.
Update: Thank you to Mary Chastain at Breitbart for linking to this article.
Thank you to Doug Ross for linking!
Related Documents:
HB 733 – Common Core Study Committee