Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) and Sen. Paul Farrow (R-Pewaukee) are sponsoring legislation that would create a Model Academic Standards Board. Tony Evers, the state’s superintendent of schools, is criticizing the measure. Credit: Journal Sentinel files

SHARE

By

Legislation poised to be rushed through the Assembly and Senate could set the stage for undoing a set of nationwide academic standards being implemented in Wisconsin and threatens to undermine the authority of the Department of Public Instruction, the state superintendent said.

The bill set for a vote in the Assembly Education Committee Thursday morning and a companion Senate version introduced this week represent the latest showdown in the polarizing debate over the Common Core State Standards.

"As soon as I saw this, I gasped," State Superintendent Tony Evers said of the legislation, which has the backing of conservative Republicans and Gov. Scott Walker.

"If we thought the Common Core State Standards were political before, this ratchets it up about 1,000%," Evers said.

The Common Core State Standards were adopted three years ago by Wisconsin and, eventually, most other states to ramp up the expectations for what students should know and be able to do by the time they graduate. They aim to bring some uniformity to what states are teaching to better prepare students for college and careers.

Evers said Assembly Bill 617 has been significantly modified from its earlier version, which had called for setting up a commission to provide input to the state superintendent on academic standards.

When the idea first emerged — Walker hinted at the idea at the State Education Convention last month — lawmakers and the governor were vague on whether such a commission's goal would be to stop the Common Core reading and math standards already being implemented in Wisconsin, or if it was to provide light advice to the DPI about standards in the future.

New standards board

The latest version calls for the creation of a Model Academic Standards Board co-chaired by the state superintendent, which would include six appointees from the governor and four from the state superintendent.

The bill calls for members of the board to come from different backgrounds, such as a university professor and school principal, but it also calls for members to be appointed from private voucher schools, even though those private schools receiving taxpayer money are not beholden to follow statewide academic standards for public schools.

Under the bill, the board would submit proposals for standards in subjects such as reading, math and science to the state superintendent, who would then submit recommendations to a joint legislative committee.

Lawmakers on that committee would have the power to reject the superintendent's recommendations and pick the board's recommendations instead.

The proposed legislation also calls for a new statewide test based on the recommended standards, which would undercut the march toward the Smarter Balanced assessment that's scheduled to replace the current state achievement test in reading, language arts and math next school year.

That online assessment, tied to the Common Core and also being implemented by other states, has taken years to develop.

"The bottom line is (this bill) would have the ability to completely defeat the Common Core and replace it with something else, and that would happen with legislators writing standards," Evers said.

"They'll be debating whether to teach evolution on the floor of these august bodies," he said.

But Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa), a key senator behind the bill along with Sen. Paul Farrow (R-Village of Pewaukee), said the standards wouldn't be changed on the floor by lawmakers as long as Evers complies with what the new standards board recommends.

She dismissed his suggestion that the bill could lead to changes such as the teaching of evolution being removed from public schools.

"I don't know what he's talking about," she said.

Walker backs bill

Speaking to reporters in Madison Wednesday, Walker said he supported the bill.

"I think Wisconsin standards should be higher than where the discussion is nationally and I think they should be set by people in Wisconsin and not people outside the state, and I think this offers a mechanism to do that," Walker said.

The governor dismissed criticism as what he called a "worst-case scenario."

"In the end you're not going to have the debate topic by topic on the floor of the Assembly or the Senate. You're going to have this panel working on it for the next year," Walker said.

Rep. Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna), who is signed onto the Assembly version of the bill, said the bill would lead to more transparency in approving school standards, which would avoid the controversy that erupted among some over Common Core after they were adopted.

Virtually none of the people opposed to Common Core standards today raised objections three years ago, when the academic guidelines were posted online for public comment and then adopted with little fanfare by Evers and the DPI.

Widely supported

The standards have widespread support from thousands of teachers and principals, as well as the business community.

While there has been some concern from teachers and parents over the standards' ties to testing, opposition aimed at dismantling the higher and more uniform academic standards has been led by tea party Republicans who believe they amount to federal intrusion in local control of schools.

Education experts call that a myth, because the standards were developed by governors and state superintendents.

Mike Steele, an associate professor of mathematics education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said the Common Core guidelines were developed with input from experts in math and English education and instructional psychology.

"Yanking the standards now is like building half of a 15-story skyscraper and then deciding to blow up the foundation," Steele added. "You don't even know what this building is going to look like yet."

Journal Sentinel reporters Jason Stein and Patrick Marley contributed to this story from Madison.