The South Dakota House of Representatives defeated House Concurrent Resolution 1008 yesterday. After fierce debate, the House voted 35 to 31 against the following statement:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-Ninth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that we do hereby urge the South Dakota Board of Education to refrain from any effort to expand such educational standards of any kind in any subject area in our state, and further ask the board to establish a plan to end our state's involvement with the Common Core State Standards in the subject areas of math and English/language arts by June 30, 2017.
Compare that language to this passage from the South Dakota Republican Party platform:
The South Dakota Republican Party supports parental choice and local control in education in our state. The South Dakota Republican Party opposes any further state mandated adoption of what are generally known as ‘Common Core Standards’ in areas of academic study in our K-12 schools beyond what has currently been adopted and acknowledges those decisions should be made at the discretion of each individual school district [SDGOP platform, plank 4.3, downloaded 2014.01.30].
So who voted against the Republican party platform and for Common Core? Democrats, of course, surely trying to foist a liberal agenda of top-down centralized control of education and the melting of your children's brains into disciples of Marxism. But also (roll call!) Reps. Carson, Conzet, Dryden, Duvall, Gosch, Hajek, Johns, Lust, Novstrup, Otten, Romkema, Rounds, Rozum, Schoenfish, Sly, Solum, Stevens, Tulson, and Werner. 19 Republicans, including four members of the House majority leadership (in bold) collaborating with Democrats to vote against their own party platform.
Worth noting: RINO spin machine Dakota War College maligns Rep. Stace Nelson for working with Democrats to introduce government reform legislation that coheres with Republican platform principles on open government and fairness in immigration. Said spin machine says nothing to take its own Republican leadership to task for working with Democrats to oppose a plank of the Republicans' own platform on education.
Sighing in relief.
Common Core in and of itself is okay. I examined the set-up and concluded that it's skills- not content-oriented. Those who think it's about the latter are nutty. My main concern with a system like this is that by setting achievement levels on a nation-wide scale, teaching strategies are likely to get standardized. I think local schools and districts will tend to lose their incentives to experiment and innovate. That I don't like, so on balance I'd rather not have Common Core imposed.
It should be noted that Dennis Feickert was the only Democrat who supported the resolution, Thank You Dennis.
Time for new leadership, Republicans. If you have the majority on this issue, surely you can accomplish a majority on electing new leadership.
CAH,
While I appreciate your vigilance that we follow our platform, you need to read the platform more closely. It opposes adoption of FURTHER standards. The current standards were already adopted which means the platform supports the current standards
The people who did not follow the platform are those who introduced this Resolution. I wonder if the "platform Zealots" will list this Resolution the next time they put together a scorecard.
hey Troy do you have a link for the GOP platform?
Thanks
Owen,
Google not working for you?
http://southdakotagop.com/about-the-party/our-platform/
Professor Newquist on Troy Jones:
http://northernbeacon.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-prospects-are-better-for-ukraine.html
not today Troy. Thanks
So Troy, if the resolution had left out the "plan to end involvement," we'd have had a united GOP vote in favor?
"The South Dakota Republican Party supports parental choice and local control in education in our state."
The problem is that the platform doesn't reflect the historical reality in South Dakota. That reality is that Republican-dominated Legislatures and Republican Governors have engaged in 40 years of chipping away at local control of education and parental choice.