Common Core supporters rip bill that would limit testing of… | www.myajc.com

Anti-Common Core legislation hit some resistance Wednesday as opponents blasted the bill in front of a House committee and Gov. Nathan Deal pointedly said it is not a “finished product.”

Senate Bill 167, which has passed the Senate and appeared headed to smooth passage in the House, would prohibit Georgia from testing students on material tied to the national academic standards called Common Core.

At a hearing on the bill, the House committee listened to 68 speakers. Many of them were educators defending the Common Core standards as helpful to Georgia schoolchildren. State Schools Superintendent John Barge spoke out against SB 167, saying it would cause chaos in the system and put federal dollars at risk. However, other speakers decried Common Core as a federal intrusion.

Opponents of the bill, speaking in favor of Common Core, weren’t just from the education field. The national standards also have supporters in the business world and the military because they standardize when schoolchildren across the country are exposed to concepts.

“We urge you to stick with the Common Core,” retired Navy Rear Adm. Casey Coane told House committee members. “Standards without assessments, however, are useless.”

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Announcing his own opposition to SB 167, Barge said passage of the bill would throw into question as much as $1 billion in federal funding because the federal government requires all states to have standards and assessments tied to them.

“This bill has quite a bit of language that would throw our education system into chaos,” Barge said.

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