Committee fails to make Common Core recommendation

By Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – A legislative committee created solely to study whether Indiana should continue implementing the controversial Common Core educational standards adjourned for the year Friday without making a recommendation.

State Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, is the co-chair of the Interim Study Committee on Common Core Educational Standards and said the group was charged with making a recommendation about the standards to the State Board of Education. But the group couldn’t get a majority vote on its proposal. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com

Republicans on the evenly divided committee called for the State Board of Education to abandon Common Core in favor of standards that would be based on “Hoosier common sense.”

But the lone Democrat who showed up for Friday’s meeting voted no, denying the GOP the votes needed to send the recommendation to the State Board of Education.

Rep. Justin Moed, D-Indianapolis, said his vote wasn’t as much intended to support Common Core – a set of national standards adopted by more than 40 states – as it was a protest of the process that led to the committee proposal. He said the group heard hours of testimony for and against Common Core but never had a working session to try to hammer out a recommendation that a majority of members could support.

State Rep. Justin Moed, D-Indianapolis, was the one Democrat to show up for the final meeting of the Interim Study Committee on Common Core Educational Standards. Moed voted against a GOP proposal to abandon Common Core in favor of state-created standards and it failed to pass. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com

Instead, he said, Republicans – who chair the Interim Study Committee on Common Core Educational Standards and hold the majority in the Indiana House and Senate – distributed the proposed recommendation a day before the meeting.

“This committee was set up by the legislature and the governor to be a bipartisan committee,” Moed said. “And in order to do that, the parties have to work together. And the only parties working together on this issue were the Republican Party and the tea party.”

None of the committee’s other five Democrats attended Friday’s meeting, although they’ve been to three previous meetings that included more than 25 hours of public and expert testimony on the issue.

Republican members said they would still send the proposal to the state board, even if it doesn’t have the endorsement of the committee.

Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon, said Friday she’s disappointed the Interim Study Committee on Common Core Educational Standards couldn’t reach an agreement on a proposal to abandon the standards and replace them with some drafted by Indiana officials. Bu she said the board’s indecision should send a message to the State Board of Education that there’s no consensus support for Common Core. Photo by Lesley Weidenbener, TheStatehouseFile.com

Rep. Rhonda Rhoads, R-Corydon, said she was disappointed the group couldn’t get enough votes to pass the measure. But she said the committee’s split on the issue should be a signal to the Board of Education that there’s no consensus that Common Core is the right direction.

“We need to work on finding a better solution for our students,” Rhoads said.

Common Core is a set of K-12 school standards created by a group of state education officials and endorsed by President Barack Obama’s administration. The State Board of Education voted in 2010 to start phasing in Common Core, a decision that drew little attention.

But as educational materials associated with the standards began to emerge, so did opposition and the General Assembly voted earlier this year to pause its implementation for a second look. The legislative committee’s recommendation was to be part of that process.

One of the committee’s co-chairs, Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, started Friday’s meeting saying the group had an obligation to approve a recommendation. But he said he wasn’t surprised that several Democrats didn’t attend.

“Their absence obviously shows that they must not have a strong commitment to it,” he said.

Sen. Carlin Yoder, R-Middlebury, castigated Democrats for failing to show attend the group’s last meeting.

“It makes no sense to me after we’ve spent as much time as we did studying this and there’s not a desire to at least weigh in on this issue. I’m sick of walkouts,” Yoder said, a reference to Democratic walkouts in the Indiana House in 2012 over labor legislation.

Moed said Democrats did not coordinate an effort to skip Friday’s meeting. He said members had little notice the group was to meet and did not feel they had input into the proposed recommendation.

Lesley Weidenbener is executive editor at TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.