Gunn introduces bill to kill Common Core

Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn introduced a bill this week to repeal the Common Core State Standards and replace it with a Mississippi-specific set of standards for K-12 students.

House Bill 156 would "delete the requirement that the state Department of Education form a single accountability system by combing the state system with the federal system." It also would rename the state's standards "Mississippi College and Career-Ready Standards."

Gunn also introduced a bill, HB 385, to replace the end-of-year assessment developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, with the ACT test.

Both bills were referred to the House Education Committee.

House Education Committee Chairman John Moore, R-Brandon, didn't immediately return a call for comment.

"The objective is to opt out of PARCC and make ACT the assessment, to remove the federal attachment and to give control of our curriculum to the local school districts," Gunn said.

Many Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, support the repeal of Common Core because they claim it forces a national agenda into Mississippi classrooms and lacks evidence of academic rigor.

State. Sen. Michael Watson, R-Pascagoula, said Mississippi can adopt standards from states like California and Massachusetts, whose pre-Common Core math and English standards he said exceeded those included in the national version.

Mississippi adopted Common Core in 2010, along with most states in the nation. State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright and many educators support the standards.

"I think there's a general feeling of concern," Gunn said, "over Common Core and exactly what it does and what it is."

Contact Emily Le Coz at elecoz@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7249. Follow @emily_lecoz on Twitter.