Sumter Republicans Reject Common Core

On Thursday, January 23, 2014 the Executive Committee of the Sumter County Republican Party unanimously passed a Resolution to Reject the Common Core Curriculum in South Carolina. We want to make it clear to the SC Legislature, as well as the community-at-large, that we value the quality of the education of all our children in the great state of SC, as well as our right to choose and participate in our children’s education, and believe the Common Core Curriculum is antithetical to these rights and beliefs.

The resolution, in its entirety, follows:

RESOLUTION TO REJECT THE COMMON CORE CURRICULUM

WHEREAS, in 2010 officials in the Executive Branch committed our state to participation in the Common Core State Standards Initiative through the federal Race to the Top grant application; and

WHEREAS, this participation required our state to adopt the Common Core standards in K-12 English language arts and mathematics, and to commit to implementing the national SMARTER Balanced (SBAC) assessments, all without legislative oversight and without public input; and

WHEREAS, adoption of Common Core obliterates South Carolina’s constitutional autonomy over education in English language arts and mathematics, placing control in the hands of the federal government and unaccountable private interests in Washington, DC; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core standards have been evaluated by experts as mediocre at best, and based on questionable philosophies; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core standards will inevitably lead to a national curriculum, in violation of three federal statutes; and

WHEREAS, the Common Core scheme will be expanded to include national standards and curriculum in science, social studies, and other subjects; and

WHEREAS, neither the Common Core standards nor the SBAC assessments were ever piloted to determine their effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, both the Common Core standards and the SBAC tests will impose an enormous unfunded mandate on our state and our local school districts; and WHEREAS, Common Core is part of a national scheme that includes collection and sharing of massive amounts of personal student and teacher data;

THEREFORE, the Sumter County Republican Party hereby resolves that our state leaders should: “Withdraw our state from the Common Core State Standards Initiative; Withdraw our state from the SBAC assessment scheme, and any other testing aligned with the Common Core standards; Prohibit all state officials from entering into any agreement that cedes any measure of control over South Carolina education to entities outside the state and ensure that all content standards and curriculum decisions are adopted through a transparent state-wide process fully accountable to the citizens of South Carolina; and Prohibit the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose, and the sharing of personal data except with schools or education agencies within the state.”

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