By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
A new Rasmussen Poll shows that support for Common Core among Americans with school-age children has dropped dramatically, as more and more states get further along in their implementation of the highly controversial new education standards, being promoted by President Barack Hussein Obama’s Department of Education.
According to the Rasmussen telephone poll, parents with school age children now increasingly question whether the new national education standards will actually improve student performance.
Only 34 percent of American Adults with children of elementary or secondary school age now favor requiring all schools nationwide to meet the same Common Core education standards. That’s an 18-point drop from 52 percent in early November of last year. Forty-seven percent of parents now oppose the imposition of the national standards, compared to 32 percent in the previous survey. 19 percent of parents are still undecided. This change corresponds with more and more of the radical new education standards and associated curriculum actually reaching the classroom and parents actually getting to see the new lessons and texts.
More and more states are starting to heed the cries of parents and voters to oppose the Common Core Standards. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant has recently announced his ardent opposition to the Common Core education standards on Thursday, June 19. Governor Bryant told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, “I think Common Core is a failed program, and the United States is beginning to realize that. Governors all across America are realizing states can do it better.”
This follows a stronger reversal by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R). Governor Jindal announced that Louisiana would opt out of the Common Core standards in a gubernatorial executive order. “We’re very alarmed about choice and local control of curriculum being taken away from our parents and educators,” he said at a press conference. “If other states want to allow the Federal government to dictate to them, they have every right to make that choice.”
Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White has ordered Louisiana school systems to defy Governor Jindal’s executive order. White told the New York Times that applying the controversial Common Core math standards would take time. White told the Times, “This is a shift for an entire society. No one should be under any illusion that it’s going to take just a year or two to rethink the way that we teach mathematics, because it is really challenging.”
Both South Carolina and Oklahoma have recently opted out of the unpopular education standards.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) wrote that South Carolina’s education challenges, “…cannot be solved by increasing our dependence on Federal dollars and the mandates that come with them. Just as we should not relinquish control of education to the Federal government, neither should we cede it to the consensus of other states…While I understand and agree with looking outside South Carolina for ideas to improve educational outcomes, I firmly believe that our government and our people should retain as much local control over programs as possible.”
Meanwhile in Alabama, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh (R) from Anniston and the Republican controlled state school board have defied resolutions by the Alabama Republican Party Executive Committee demanding that Alabama also opt out of the unproven and untested Common Core educational standards. Following passage of the resolution by the Alabama Republican Executive Committee in February 2013, Alabama Republican Party Chairman Bill Armistead said, “The membership of the Alabama Republican Party has spoken and we ask our Republican legislators in Montgomery to hear our request. Now is the time for the House and Senate to take up the repeal and defunding of Common Core.”
Even though bills to repeal Common Core were introduced in both 2013 and 2014, the measure did not have the support of the Republican leadership and did not pass.
Whether or not the State of Alabama will continue implementing the unpopular new standards or will heed the growing calls of parents and conservatives alike to reject the new standards is a matter for the legislature to decide in the 2015 legislative session.
