The Marietta Daily Journal – Officials reject Core principles during meeting

MARIETTA — Cobb school board member Kathleen Angelucci met this week with cross-county colleagues Mary Kay Bacallao of Fayette County and Kelly Marlow of Cherokee County to discuss the potential ramifications Common Core could have on local schools.

They met at Cherokee Cattle Co. off of Canton Road in east Cobb with about 50 people in attendance. The three school board members described the history, implementation and future of Common Core in their school districts.

The forum was held by a local chapter of the Northwest Georgia 9/12 project. The conservative, nonpartisan group says on its website that it “strives to uphold America’s Founding Principles through education, service and political action. We promote states’ rights, the Constitution, limited government and the rule of law.”

The group strongly opposes the continued implementation of Common Core in Georgia.

“Teaching and learning will become the by-products of Common Core,” Angelucci said.

Angelucci said she is concerned Common Core standards are “sub-standard, developmentally inappropriate standards” that hold teachers to impossible evaluation standards and over-tests students and teachers alike.

She is worried that the total cost of Common Core reaches far beyond the $7.5 million math textbooks the Cobb Board of Education voted not to order this school year. Angelucci said teachers were tired of having their curriculums changed every few years.

“Teachers are tired of the rug getting pulled out from under them. I know our teachers are tired, and it’s not fair to evaluate them based on these standards,” she said.

Marlow called Common Core “the largest unfunded federal mandate in the history of the United States.”

Many present at the forum, including all three speakers, said the standards represent an overreach of the federal government, and a loss of local control.

via The Marietta Daily Journal – Officials reject Core principles during meeting.