At the legislature today, the senate passes the Governor’s bill to reform the state’s juvenile justice system. Senators from both sides of the aisle praise the bill they say will mend troubled kids and their families. A public hearing this morning brings out the issue of discrimination against the LGBT community in West Virginia. And the State Board of Education held an emergency meeting Friday to discuss a bill they say could cause substantial harm to students, teachers, and school systems in the state. We’ll find out more on The Legislature Today.
Tag: Common Core
Common Core, Home Schooling, & Tensions Over Coal Jobs and Safety Act of 2015 in House
In the House Wednesday, the Education committee considered a bill that would repeal the common core standards in West Virginia schools. It passed with little debate, but received four amendments to adjust some technicalities and add new provisions to teacher organizations. It now heads to the floor for its consideration. But it was a bill relating to home schooling that brought some discussion among the delegates.
House Bill 2793 contains many provisions relating to home schooling. Among them, it removes the requirement that the person providing the home schooling instruction have a high school diploma; and it permits a parent to administer the required nationally normed standardized test.
Delegate Denise Campbell of Randolph County expressed some concern with the removal of this provision, and questioned who would monitor the tests if parents were allowed to administer them.
Mike Donnelly is an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association as well as a father of children who are home schooled. He addressed Campbell’s concern.
“The purpose of education is to help a child to attain the level of achievement that they’re capable of attaining, and a standardized test doesn’t really do that,” Donnelly noted, “So wherever you’ve got home school parents who have the ability to choose other approaches to assess their child, they’re gonna tend not to use that standardized test, because they want feedback that’s gonna be illustrative and instructed to them, so they’re going to ask a certified teacher, can you help me out here, what are you seeing here?”
During the floor session, another bill relating to home schooling was up for passage.
Delegate Amanda Pasdon, the House Education Chair, spoke on behalf of House Bill 2674.
“This bill allows home school students qualify for the PROMISE scholarship without taking the GED,” Pasdon explained, “It essentially levels the playing field. Home school students will be subject to the same standards as students who attend public or private high schools. I urge passage.”
House Bill 2674 passed 97 to 1. The one nay vote came from Delegate Dana Lynch, a Democrat from Webster County.
Another seven bills were up for passage, but all of them passed without any debate.
In the house, the part of the floor session that allows remarks by members have turned tense on many days and Wednesday was one of them.
Senate Bill 357, the Coal Jobs and Safety Act of 2015 was on first reading, not at the debate stage. But fresh from his angry speech in the Government Organization Committee about prevailing wage, Delegate Mike Caputo of Marion County addressed a set of articles he’d sent to all the delegates. The articles referenced multiple mine disasters that happened in recent years, and Caputo called the bill anything but about mine safety.
“There’s only a few of us in here ever been in a coal mine, and some of us have different views on this, and I respect that, but I’m telling you when you’re moving a major piece of equipment in a mine under extreme conditions anything can happen whether you have a trolley wire or whether you don’t. And when coal miners are in by that move, if that move catches on fire, you can have all the transportation equipment you want, you can have all the communication equipment you want, you can have all the rescue equipment you want, that smoke’s gonna get‘em. And you’re gonna be casting a vote tomorrow, an amendment, that I’m going to introduce to put this law back the way it was and the way it should be. So please, read this. Read this. Every coal company that testified to change that law, not once talked about health and safety, they talked about increasing profits, and I will close by saying, the most important thing, the most important thing to ever come out of a coal mine, is the coal miner.” – Delegate Mike Caputo
Delegate Randy Smith of Preston County was outraged by Caputo’s statements.
“I don’t sit behind a desk everyday making decisions. The men I work with don’t pay me to go and sit behind desks. I go underground every day. I’m in these conditions. I know what I’m talking about, and I’m here to tell you that I take offense to being my character attacked on social media, in the newspaper, from colleagues in this chamber. The bottom line is, when it’s said and done, I’m going to go back underground with those men, and anybody that thinks that I would pass a bill to put someone’s life in danger, and put my life in danger, all I can say is it saddens my heart to think that they would think I would be that low. This bill here, this situation that was just, he was just talking about, this situation this bill addresses, if it’s energized trolley wire, you come out by, it’s as simple as that. That doesn’t change, that’s what this law here was made, that’s what brought this law on was energized trolley wire that caused the fire, and it keeps that in place, but why should we stay in 1972? I would say within the next five years, there will be no, no trolley wire in the coal mines anywhere.” – Delegate Randy Smith
Senate Bill 357 will be on second reading, the amendment stage, Thursday.
Yes or No to Common Core? W.Va. Isn't Sure.
Common Core is an educational initiative that has been in news headlines lately due to some controversy surrounding it. At the State Capitol yesterday, Delegates, Senators, and public met on the House floor to hear from eight representatives either for or against Common Core.
Some citizens against Common Core sat in on the meeting, sporting bright, yellow t-shirts that said in bold black letters, “save our students” on one side and “stop common core” on the other. Caution tape lined the aisles of the chamber as if a crime scene had taken place.
Dr. Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas, was one of six speakers from out of state to address the issue. She claims those who wrote up the standards were not qualified.
“When we get to actually who wrote the standards, which is where I came into action on the validation committee, it then turns out that most of the key writers for both the ELA and the math standards had no K-12 teaching experience at all,” said Stotsky, “the ELA, English Language Arts writers had no degree in English or English literature, they had no prior involvement with K-12 education, indeed they were totally unknown to everyone in the field. Who chose them, why they were chosen, to this day, we still don’t know, because everything was done non-transparently.”
One of the speakers supporting common core was Dave Spence, the President of the Southern Regional Education Board. He argues that the level of success since Common Core was adopted, has significantly impacted education levels.
“So having one set of standards is critically important along with insuring they are rigorous enough to predict readiness for post-secondary education,” said Spence, “At SREB, since 2007, we have argued that all states should have standard meeting these criteria relating to college and career readiness. We also believe that there’s not only one set of standards in literacy and math that would meet these readiness requirements. We do believe that the common core state standards rise to the level of college and career readiness. That is why and how they were developed and researched. What I hope we don’t lose sight of as states, is that where states were seven to eight years ago, before the common core, somewhere near 40 states, either in English Literacy, Math, or both, did not come up to the level of college and career readiness.”
Delegate Amanda Pasdon, the incoming chair on Education, says there’s a lot that needs to be discussed once the Legislature is in session.
“We need to have standards for our children,” Pasdon said, “certainly everybody needs accountability and we need standards set in education. What we’re learning about Common Core is that we had some challenges with the rollout, there was some challenges with implementation, and there’s been some backlash for that, and that’s understandable, so what we want to make sure more than anything that we do is get it right for our students and get it right for our children.”
So Pasdon agrees we need standards in West Virginia, either Common Core or not Common Core.
Common Core: Educators Say Yes, Lawmakers Aren't Sure
Members of the state Board of Education heard directly from teachers this month about the development and the implementation of the state’s Next Generation Standards. Those standards are West Virginia’s version of Common Core.
“So, today is a moment for us to pause as a state to reflect on where we are with our education reform and our educational progress,” State Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Martirano said during the board’s meeting Wednesday.
He took over the job in September of this year, but before he even came to West Virginia, big changes were in the works.
During the 2013 legislative session, Governor Tomblin called for and lawmakers passed a bill focused on reforming the state’s failing education system based on an audit conducted by an outside organization in 2012.
It was in 2010 though when an even bigger change happened. That’s when the state board voted to change the education content standards of the West Virginia by adopting Common Core.
Since its adoption there has been pushback from West Virginians, including state lawmakers.
“I think most people think that we had our standards and were moving a long just fine and then this Common Core thing came along and we just threw ours out and swallowed the Common Core without even really thinking about it,” Board member Wade Linger said.
Instead, the Department of Education brought together a group of 100 teachers from all subject areas and grades levels, from all parts of the state to study the national Common Core standards and adapt them to be West Virginia specific.
“We’ve always had standards. I’ve been teaching for 27 years. I have not taught a single day without standards,” Teresa Hammond told the Board Wednesday. She was part of the group of 100 teachers.
In 2010, Hammond was teaching the curriculum the state had in place called the 21st Century Standards. Hammond told the board as she and her fellow educators started delving into the process, they saw major similarities between 21st Century and Common Core standards.
The teachers found 80 percent of West Virginia’s 21 Century English Language Arts standards and 73 percent of the Math standards aligned perfectly with Common Core.
The changes they did have to make, Hammond told the board, were mostly with progression, making sure children were learning the right concepts at the right ages.
Hammond said the new standards are more rigorous, but they are also more relevant and make what the students learn mean something in the world they live in.
But state lawmakers are less sure about Common Core, Republican Senator Donna Boley perhaps more than any other.
With the change in legislative power, Boley will become the new Vice Chair of the Senate’s Education Committee, an influential post. She’s made it clear in the last few weeks that the standards will be a focus.
“What I’m saying is let’s look at it, maybe we’re wrong in opposing,” she said in an interview earlier this month.
“Let’s discuss it openly and see what we can do. Maybe we can fix some of it, but maybe we have to throw it out and start over again.”
Linger said he and other members of the board, including Board President Gayle Manchin, have been meeting informally with lawmakers to open a dialogue about Common Core.
“I would say that at least 90 percent of the people who are against the new standards don’t know what they are. They’ve read something about some other states or they heard something,” he said, “but if they saw what we have, they’re great standards and if we just follow through with it and give it time to show that it works, we’re going to see our student achievement rise and we’re going to get off the bottom of the list.”
Republican lawmakers have not yet released their education agenda for the upcoming session, but Linger said the board intends to work closely with both the House and Senate to keep West Virginia’s education system on the right track.