COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio’s Republican Senator has joined with others in trying to stop the Obama administration from “coercing” local schools to adopt the controversial Common Core standards.
Rob Portman Friday today joined fellow Republicans Pat Roberts of Kansas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe in introducing a bill that prohibits the federal government from “coercing states to adopt education standards like Common Core” by threatening to withhold grants or other funds from those who do not participate, Portman’s office said in a press release.
“Decisions about education curriculum should be made at the local or state level – not from Washington. Having a one-size-fits-all Washington approach to education is harmful to our children and to our education system,” Portman says in the statement.
An effort to set uniform math and reading standards across the country, Common Core was designed in 2007 by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. States could adopt the standards voluntarily and many, including Ohio, have.
However, an initially cordial reception of the standards has eroded because of the additional testing burden opponents say it places on students and teachers.
The Learning Opportunities Created At the Local (LOCAL) Level Act would “forbid the federal government from intervening in a state’s education standards, curricula, and assessments through the use of incentives, mandates, grants, waivers or any other form of manipulation,” Portman’s office said.
Portman accuses the Obama administration of “coercing” states to implement Common Core, requiring them to adopt the standards in order to receive a share of $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top funding and using federal funds to develop tests based on the standards.
While a large majority of teachers favored nationwide standards for reading, writing and math, fewer support using tests to measure students’ performance, and an even smaller number favor evaluating teachers based on their students’ performance, according to a report in the New York Times.