State Board of Education votes to sever ties with Common Core

The board voted 6-2 to drop the education standards.

Board President Doug Miller voted against Douglas’ motion says the Board’s action will have little if any impact on Arizona Common Core standards.

The State Board of Education moved one step closer to meeting Superintendent Diane Douglas’ goal of scrapping Arizona’s Common Core-based standards following a vote Monday morning that authorizes changes to the curriculum.

Monday’s was the first meeting Douglas attended since August. She and the board have been battling since she tried to fire staff members earlier in the year.

Last month the Board filed a lawsuit against Douglas to force her to give remote computer access to board investigators and to re-direct web traffic to the board’s new website.

Douglas ran largely on the single issue of repealing the standards, calling them a “de facto mandate, only to be renamed Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards”, during her January State of Education address.

Dept. of Education spokesman Charles Tack said, though the vote severs ties to Common Core, the standards will remain in place for the time being.

Cases in point. In response to political pressure from Washington, DC, to make 100 percent of students proficient during the Bush II No Child Left Behind era, the overall rigor of Arizona state standards went from a B- in 2003 to a D+ in 2009.

“The Department of Education has had a standards review process that the board agreed upon sometime ago”, said Douglas.

“Doesn’t mean anything”, Miller said.

The vote affects schoolchildren in every classroom across the state.