Reps. Gary Marshall, center, and Gayann DeMordaunt, right, talk during a break at a House Education Committee meeting regarding Idaho education standards.
Reps. Gary Marshall, center, and Gayann DeMordaunt, right, talk during a break at a House Education Committee meeting regarding Idaho education standards.
BOISE — After nearly two hours of debate, the House Education Committee on Wednesday voted 10-5 to reject all of Idaho’s content standards for schools, including for English/language arts, math and science.
The move doesn’t take effect unless the Senate Education Committee concurs; it’s expressed little interest in moving that direction. In four of the past five years, the Legislature has held extensive hearings on school science standards, after some lawmakers objected to how they addressed climate change. Two years ago, House committee members sought to remove several climate change references from the science standards, but the Senate declined.
Wednesday morning’s vote went several steps further, dumping all state content standards.
Backers of the move on the committee, led by Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, said they wanted to dump “Common Core.”
The standards are referred to by the state as the Idaho Core standards; while based on the multi-state Common Core movement that seeks to standardize basic expectations for student learning, Idaho’s standards were developed by Idaho educators after extensive hearings over several years.
“We have not had our test scores go up like they were supposed to, we have a lot of very confused kids, we have frustrated parents who cannot help their kids,” Boyle argued. “It is time to pitch these out, find something that actually does work for kids so they can learn, the parents can help them.”
Though the move, if it took effect, would leave the state with no content standards for what students should learn in each grade level, Boyle said the state Board of Education could just pass a temporary rule to reimpose them while it began the process of setting new standards.
“By rejecting them, we are sending a clear message to the state board to please revisit this, take a serious look,” Boyle said.
The “no” votes came from two Republicans and three Democrats; the two Republicans were the committee’s chairman, Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, and vice chair, Rep. Ryan Kerby, R-New Plymouth.
The three Democratic committee members voting “no” were Reps. John McCrostie, D-Boise, who made his own, unsuccessful motion to approve the rules as-is; Chris Abernathy, D-Pocatello; and Steve Berch, D-Boise.
All those voting in favor of jettisoning the standards were Republicans.
Berch noted that the committee held three days of hearings, and drew extensive testimony, with educators overwhelmingly backing the current standards.
Berch said he knocks on thousands of doors in his district to campaign, and he used to hear concerns from parents about Common Core, but those have dropped off substantially since 2016. He said that’s because the West Ada School District invested in teacher training to make sure teachers are accurately communicating their curriculum.
The words “common core,” he said, “don’t appear in the standards, by the way.”
But he said it’s a handy catch-phrase for general complaints about education. “If you don’t like the test scores, blame common core,” Berch said. “If you can’t help your kids with their math homework, blame common core.”
Rep. Gayann DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, said student test scores have “flat-lined” since the standards were adopted, and she hears from other parents that they struggle to help their children with their homework. “I’m not sure that we could do worse, but we certainly owe it to our students and to the citizens of Idaho to do better,” DeMordaunt said.
Boyle, DeMordaunt and the following representatives voted to reject the standards:
• Rep. Paul Shepherd, R-Riggins
• Rep. Ron Mendive, R-Coeur d’Alene
• Rep. Dorothy Moon, R-Stanley
• Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls
• Rep. Bill Goesling, R-Moscow
• Rep. Gary Marshall, R-Idaho Falls
• Rep. Jerald Raymond, R-Menan
• Rep. Tony Wisniewski, R-Post Falls
McCrostie, a music teacher, said he has concerns about testing requirements. But he said continued efforts to repeal the standards sow confusion in Idaho’s schools and decrease morale among professional educators who travel to the Statehouse year after year to ask legislators to leave the standards alone.
Kerby, a retired school superintendent, urged Republican colleagues to choose a slower, more deliberate approach over an immediate repeal. He pointed out English and math standards will be up for a regularly scheduled review in 2021. He urged the committee to partner with the State Board and the State Department of Education on standards review and provide feedback at that time.
“We can take care of this with a very thoughtful process that provides stability for our schools that won’t have people wondering what the standards are going to be next year and what’s going to happen the year after that,” Kerby said.
It was the second consecutive day that the House panel had the content standards on its agenda. On Tuesday, the committee didn’t get to them, instead voting along party lines to delete all the state’s standards, 300 pages worth, for teacher certification and teacher preparation programs at Idaho’s colleges and universities.
Marshall, a retired professor at Brigham Young University-Idaho, pushed for that move, citing his experience there; the certification standards concern what Idaho teacher-preparation programs are required to teach to adequately prepare teachers, including those going through alternative routes to certification. BYU-Idaho has struggled to meet those existing standards.
Idaho Education News reporter Clark Corbin contributed to this report.
Betsy Z. Russell is the Boise bureau chief and state capitol reporter for the Idaho Press and Adams Publishing Group. Follow her on Twitter at @BetsyZRussell.
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