YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s board of directors announced it voted to oppose Ohio House Bill 597, which would eliminate the Common Core learning standards in the state’s public schools.
In a news release announcing the board’s decision, the Regional Chamber said repealing Common Core would place a “tremendous burden on local school districts and educational service centers which have spent considerable time and money over the last four years preparing for implementation.”
The chamber joins six other Ohio metro chambers of commerce -- the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Columbus Chamber, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber -- and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce in opposing H.B. 597. Other opponents include state associations representing Ohio superintendents, treasurers, school boards, teachers, charter schools and catholic schools.
Opponents of Common Core, through H.B. 597, want Ohio, beginning in 2015, to use standards in place in Massachusetts then create standards unique to Ohio over the following three years that would take effect in 2018. Current freshmen would be forced to take three different graduation tests before leaving high school and four years of preparation for the implementation of Common Core would be erased, according to the chamber.
Developed by the Council of State School Officers and the National Governors Association and adopted by the Ohio Board of Education in 2010, the Common Core standards place greater emphasis on reading, writing, critical thinking, problem solving and depth of knowledge than Ohio’s existing standards, which focus on memorization, the chamber said.
More than 40 other states have adopted the Common Core learning standards, which enable teachers to better prepare Ohio students for higher education and the workplace. The standards “provide colleges with an apples-to-apples comparison” between Ohio students and their peers across the country and “establish consistent performance baselines” for evaluating annual progress in Ohio’s public schools.
SOURCE: Regional Chamber.
Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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