Republicans presenting bill repealing state’s Common Core standards

By Riley Snyder, Associated Press

Published Wednesday, April 1, 2015 | 8:21 a.m.

Updated Wednesday, April 1, 2015 | 2:48 p.m.

CARSON CITY — A group of Nevada Republicans are attempting to make the state the latest to repeal Common Core K-12 education standards.

Assemblyman Brent Jones is the primary bill sponsor of AB 303 and plans to present the bill Wednesday before the Assembly Education Committee.

Jones said he takes issue with confusing Common Core standards and was concerned with student privacy and certain forms of standardized testing. The freshman Republican said Nevada should adopt education standards used by Massachusetts and that the state should have the freedom to adopt its own programs.

"Common Core is just an experiment," he said. "There's still a long ways to go."

The standards were initially developed by a number of education advocates and elected officials around the nation to create a basic set of reading, math and critical thinking standards that could be shared and adopted by schools around the country.

Although President Barack Obama has supported the standards and tied state adoption of the program to federal grant funding, the federal government isn't directly involved with operating Common Core standards.

A total of 45 states have adopted the standards, but repealing legislation has been introduced in more than a dozen states due to concerns. Lawmakers in Oklahoma and Indiana repealed the standards in 2014.

Several dozen anti-Common Core supporters swarmed the Legislature before the bill hearing Wednesday, with some holding signs comparing the set of education standards to communism. Former California State University, Fullerton professor Virginia Stearrett was among the protesters and said program sets impossible standards for students.

"They're not rigorous, they're ridiculous," she said.

The Clark County School District estimates that repealing the standards and reverting to a different set of educational requirements could cost upward of $63 million to buy textbooks and re-train teachers. School lobbyist Joyce Haldeman said using common standards helps the district compare successes and find areas of improvements with other school districts.

"Even if there wasn't a fiscal note, we'd still be testifying against it," she said. "The notion that you want to compare apples to apples rather than apples to kumquats is a good thing."

Washoe County School District lobbyist Lindsay Anderson said the district was opposed to the repeal and that taking on a new set of standards would "be a big undertaking."

Nevada adopted Common Core standards in 2009 under former Gov. Jim Gibbons. The standards were approved nearly unanimously by the Legislature at the time.