Watson: Gov. Bryant was right to veto Common Core bill

The fight against Common Core is raging across the United States, and Mississippi is no exception. Supporters of Common Core include President Obama, his education secretary Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, the Fordham Institute and our own State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright, among many others. Opponents include a growing army of parents, grandparents, teachers, administrators, legislators and executives across the nation.

On Thursday, Gov. Phil Bryant vetoed SB 2161, the “Common Core” bill. I haven’t the slightest doubt in my mind that Gov. Bryant made the right call and applaud him for doing so.

SB 2161 did nothing to ensure the demise of Common Core in MS. Here is what it did:

It put yet another study commission together to review the standards and make nonbinding recommendations to the state Board of Education. Remember, the state Board of Education got us into this mess and has recently issued public statements maintaining its support of the Common Core State Standards.

It stated the PARCC assessments could not be required, but it didn’t prohibit their use. So, let’s say the Feds sent a large grant to the Mississippi Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education then set up an application process for the funds to be disbursed. The DOE could then decide it wanted to give extra points to grant applicants whose districts decided to use the PARCC assessments. It technically would not be requiring the use of PARCC assessments, but would be legally encouraging them. Sound familiar? It should, because that’s how the federal Department of Education pushed states to adopt the Common Core State Standards in the beginning.

It included some data privacy language, which was basically the only good part of the bill. However, the bill tied the state accountability model to the federal model beginning in 2017. That is important because FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — the federal law protecting student data) would then come into play and it has been gutted.

Lastly, it renamed the Common Core State Standards.

There are times when doing nothing is better than doing something. This is one of those times. The CCSS backlash will continue to grow, and it has now gained the full attention of the Legislature. Voters are demanding measurable action to be taken against Common Core and PARCC. Had SB 2161 become law and resulted in no recommendations being accepted and implemented, legislators would have been able to say, “we tried.” Simply trying isn’t good enough when our students are hanging in the balance.

Let’s be very clear, Gov. Bryant has been against Common Core since 2013. He studied the facts, issued an executive order and has continued to receive plenty of information about it. Sen. Angela Hill and I have bent his ear too many times to count and have sent emails and notes full of facts dismantling Common Core. More recently, he was supportive of SB 2690, the bill Sen. Hill and I crafted this session that clearly repealed CCSS in Mississippi and replaced them with standards that even the pro-CCSS Fordham Institute found were superior to CCSS.

Had legislative leadership truly desired to end Common Core in Mississippi, they could have pushed Sen. Hill’s well-researched and thought-out bill. Unfortunately, they chose to kick the can down the road in hopes the state Board of Education would accept the nonbinding recommendations from the commission and basically admit they were wrong to ever adopt the standards. Gov. Bryant chose not to kick the can down the road, and his veto ensures the issue stays on the table.

So, what do we do now? If the lieutenant governor and speaker are serious about ending Common Core in Mississippi, they should join Gov. Bryant in turning up the heat on the state Board of Education to remove and replace the Common Core State Standards. They don’t need a study commission to act.

Above all, Mississippi’s parents should ask their elected officials, schools administrators and superintendents one question: How many years of Mississippi’s children must we sacrifice to the disastrous and demoralizing implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the oppressive testing that comes with it?

State Sen. Michael Watson, R-Pascagoula, represents District 51.