It appeared Friday that, for a second year in a row, a West Virginia legislative committee was moving toward eliminating a repeal of the Common Core standards from a bill originally aimed at doing so.
Last year, the Senate Education Committee changed a repeal bill that the House of Delegates had passed to instead just require a review of the education requirements. The bill failed to pass on the last night of the session, when the Senate and House couldn't reconcile their differing versions in time.
On Friday, the House Education Committee was set to consider eliminating from a current bill the mandate to repeal West Virginia's math and English language arts standards, which greatly resemble Common Core. But Delegate Dave Perry, D-Fayette, said Republican committee members had caucus meetings for hours Friday afternoon and into the evening, and then voted to adjourn Friday evening over the objections of Democrats.
Perry, the committee's minority leader, said he opposes every version of this year's repeal legislation and wants to see the bill voted either up or down.
“Teachers and educators are totally tired and frustrated with changing standards and curriculum every two or three years,” said Perry, who supported last year's failed Common Core repeal bill but said the state Department of Education's subsequent standards review and revision process assuaged his concerns.
“Something needs to stay in place long enough to see if it works or doesn't work,” he said.
Perry said House Speaker Tim Armstead, R-Kanawha, who is not a member of the Education Committee, was part of the Friday meetings. Armstead has criticized the standards, even after the state Board of Education approved revisions expected to take effect next school year.
“It indicates the division that has occurred within their party and their inability to run the committee,” Perry said of the situation.
House Education will meet at 9 a.m. today and may take up the bill again.
House Education Chairman Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, declined to comment on Perry's allegation about division in his party and would not say whether Armstead was part of the Friday caucus or not. He said committee members had to get to other meetings Friday evening and that Friday was the first real chance for members to meet on the new committee substitute, on which he expects members will propose amendments.
The new committee substitute version of this year's House Bill 4014 might anger anti-Common Core legislators. It would ban West Virginia's current Common Core-aligned Smarter Balanced exam — which state schools Superintendent Michael Martirano's testing commission already has seemed eager to recommend abandoning — but it wouldn't repeal the standards.
Instead, it says the state Board of Education “shall continue to review, analyze, and update” the standards, in collaboration with the Legislature. It would then seem to go on to actually increase standardized testing, requiring next school year that science standardized testing, which the state board nixed for most grades this school year and last, would return to grades 3-10.
It then would require a “standardized, curriculum-based, achievement college entrance examination,” to be given to all high school juniors. The description of this exam, including that it must be “administered throughout the United States” and must test science knowledge, seems to greatly reflect the ACT.
Delegates Mike Folk, R-Berkeley, and Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, neither on the House Education Committee, suggested on the Tom Roten radio show this week that they might try, as a last resort, to discharge a Common Core repeal bill to the full House floor because the committee isn't acting.
Lawmakers, including several strongly anti-Common Core delegates, introduced HB 4014 on Feb. 2, and House Education took up a different committee substitute version of it for consideration on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. But the bill then disappeared from the committee's agenda and didn't resurface until Friday of this week.
In addition to the math and English standards repeal, that version would've also blocked next school year's planned adoption of non-Common Core based science standards. But the science standards were barely mentioned during about six hours of consideration over two days.
Instead, the committee members' questions centered on the implications of repealing West Virginia's math and English standards.
During the committee meetings last week, Delegate John Kelly, R-Wood, and one of the repeal bill's sponsors, called Christie Willis, director of curriculum and instruction for Wood County Schools, to the lectern to answer questions. Willis criticized the bill's requirement that the state revert to pre-Common Core standards next school year before developing new standards for the following school year.
She said Wood County teachers believe the old standards were less rigorous than the new ones, and Wood has already switched from algebra I, geometry and algebra II traditional math courses to integrated high school math courses, like math I and II, that combine multiple math subjects.
“I don't have algebra and geometry books sitting on our shelves for the 1,800 students at Parkersburg High School,” Willis said.
Espinosa said the initial committee substitute was the subject of “a good bit of discussion and questioning during our meetings.” He said the new version is an attempt to address the concerns and questions that were raised, including about the alleged disruption that quickly changing standards could cause.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.