This week the Columbus Dispatch released a poll that shows the Common Core has little support among Ohio voters. The poll of 1,185 registered voters has a +/- margin of error of 2.7 %.
They asked the question of those surveyed, “from what you know, do you support or oppose the Common Core educational standards being implemented in Ohio.”
Just slightly more than one in four Ohioans (26%) said they supported the Common Core. 43% said they oppose the Common Core. 31% said they didn’t know.
Ohio is home to the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation who have been avid promoters of the Common Core State Standards. Obviously they are incredibly effective in their own home state.
There is a bill, HB 597, before the Ohio House Rules & Reference Committee. Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute recently wrote that the bill represents a “smart exit strategy.”
Learning from Indiana’s disastrous effort and the good efforts in Oklahoma and South Carolina, Ohio’s HB597 is a huge step forward in that it not only rejects Common Core’s mediocre offerings, but it provides on an interim basis Massachusetts’ nation-leading standards as the new foundation to draft off of in developing new Ohio standards. The Massachusetts’ standards go into place for two years as Ohio educators, businesses, scholars and parents put their heads together in a truly public process—and develop, we hope, even better standards than what Massachusetts had.
But will Ohio Governor John Kasich listen to not only the poll, but this reasonable approach to exit from the Common Core?
It appears that he remains tone deaf and he said earlier this month doesn’t expect a repeal bill.
In a meeting yesterday with the Dispatch editorial board, Kasich was asked about the effort by some Republican legislative leaders to repeal the Common Core education standards for math and English/language arts, along with Ohio’s other standards and tests.
“I don’t know that there’s any effort to repeal Common Core,” he said. “There may be an effort to talk about it.”
Kasich has said he supports the Common Core standards, adopted by Ohio and more than 40 other states in 2010 after they were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers as a way to boost college and career readiness among U.S. students.
“I wish we could just change the name to Ohio’s standards, or whatever,” Kasich said.
It appears that he thinks just a rebranding will do. Governor Kasich, Ohioans do not agree.