House K-12 Subcommittee Chairwoman Janet Adkins proposed deleting Common Core from Florida Statutes so all the state’s education standards will be under one name. File photo by John Iarussi
By James Call| Originally Published at The Current. January 31, 2014

It’s not as Orwellian as making a person’s existence disappear from the public record but Winston Smith would recognize the maneuver.

A Florida House committee on Wednesday will discuss a proposed committee bill that expunges the words “Common Core” from state law. The K-12 Subcommittee is working on a bill, basically a housekeeping measure, repealing terminated programs and clarifying graduation requirements. It would delete 36 references to the Common Core State Standards in sections 1000.21 to 1008.22 of the Florida Statutes governing public education.

The proposal replaces Common Core with “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards.” The measure also removes references to Common Core in the definition of the Next Generation standards. Florida adopted Common Core academic standards in 2010 and was to implement them this fall.

“Name changes and cosmetic changes to standards will not pull Florida out of Common Core,” said Karen Effrem, of the Florida Stop Common Core Coalition. “We’re still going to be in the Common Core system.”

The FSCCC is among a handful of groups opposed to Common Core. Their efforts led Gov. Rick Scott to order the Department of Education to hold public hearings on academic standards last fall, to end Florida’s leading role in developing a test measuring student’s performance to the new standards, and for Education Commissioner Pam Stewart to propose 98 changes to the Common Core.

“It is completely appropriate for us to call our standards the Florida Standards,” Stewart told the Florida Board of Education this past week when it met in Miami. The commissioner also recommended relabeling the standards. The board is scheduled to vote Feb. 18 on her proposal.

Common Core is a set of mathematics and language arts benchmarks agreed upon by 45 states and the District of Columbia. The idea is to ensure that a second grader in Florida has the same set of skills and knowledge as a second grader in Wisconsin.

In the face of a grass-roots uprising against a perceived federal takeover of local schools, state officials have insisted that Florida’s new academic benchmarks will be will be homegrown.

“These are Florida standards,” both Scott and Stewart have said in public remarks about what the Board of Education will consider during its next meeting, in Orlando.

House K-12 Subcommittee Chairwoman Janet Adkins, R-Fernandina Beach, proposed deleting Common Core from Florida Statutes because the state also has standards for other subjects in addition to math and language arts.

“We will refer to all our standards under one name,” Adkins reportedly told The Washington Post. “We don’t need to have a different name for a subset for our standards.”

“That is so weak. It’s just an excuse to change the subject and to deceive people to think Florida is being independent and it is not,” Effrem said. “They’re just trying to change the name to remove the political toxicity associated with Common Core.”

The House’s K-12 Subcommittee meets 1 p.m. Wednesday in room 313 of the House Office Building in Tallahassee.

Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@thefloridacurrent.com