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Bill to replace Common Core standards in works

Charleston Daily Mail photo by Craig Cunningham Fred Albert, a math teacher at DuPont Middle School math teacher holds some common core textbooks and has posters on the wall describing the standards for the teaching method. He says that even though a few things need changed, personally he likes the method. West Virginia's Republican lawmakers predict they will soon repeal Common Core, a set of controversial standards that created national academic goals in math and English.
Charleston Daily Mail photo by Craig Cunningham
Fred Albert, a math teacher at DuPont Middle School math teacher holds some common core textbooks and has posters on the wall describing the standards for the teaching method. He says that even though a few things need changed, personally he likes the method. West Virginia’s Republican lawmakers predict they will soon repeal Common Core, a set of controversial standards that created national academic goals in math and English.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — While the majority of West Virginia’s Republican lawmakers are working on reforming the state’s prevailing wage laws and lifting the ban on charter schools, a faction within the caucus soon will turn their focus to another controversial topic: Common Core.

Spurred in part by months of public outcry in communities around the state, members of the House of Delegates and state Senate say the question of whether a repeal of the education standards will pass both houses isn’t a matter of if, but when.

“We will repeal Common Core,” said Delegate Amanda Pasdon, R-Monongalia, in a recent interview with the Daily Mail. “The public is demanding that, and we have to respect their needs and wishes.”

Common Core is a set of national math and English standards that guarantees public school students across the country get the same basic education. Created through a partnership of governors and state school officials in 2009, Common Core is meant to replace outdated benchmarks in the No Child Left Behind Act.

After they were released, the U.S. Department of Education supported the standards and, with the help of President Barack Obama, offered $4.3 billion in competitive grants to adopting states.

Despite receiving no grant money, West Virginia was the second state to adopt the standards. The state school board voted to do so in 2010 after Department of Education officials retooled and renamed them the Next Generation Content Standards.

Since then, 46 other states have adopted Common Core. While the standards have become widely unpopular across the country, Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina are the only states that have withdrawn. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia never adopted Common Core.

While lawmakers like state Sen. Donna Boley, R-Pleasants, for years have been unsuccessful in their attempts to repeal the standards, the Republican takeover in both chambers of the Legislature may finally give those critics the needed votes.

They also may have just won over another important vote in Pasdon…

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