I appreciate The Citizen reporting on the Republican candidate forum for the open Board of Education seat in District 4 on April 14. However, I would like to clarify my position on Common Core standards, which I believe was misstated by The Citizen.
You reported that I “said perhaps Common Core fits the academic bill. …” To be clear, that is not what I said, nor did I speak directly to the quality of the Common Core standards.
That is best left to the educational experts within our local school administration. Rather, the concerns I expressed with the Common Core standards come from the way they were developed at the national level and mandated for the entire state through a process that was not transparent, by a state board that is unelected and unaccountable to local citizens.
Proposals for the Race To The Top grants, conditioned by the federal government on adoption of the standards, were required to be submitted well before the standards themselves were finalized, much akin to Nancy Pelosi’s now infamous statement about Obamacare: “We have to pass [it] so that you can find out what is in it.”
I have consistently stated that I oppose Common Core.
Mindy Fredrikson
Fayetteville, Ga.
[Editor’s note: Candidate Fredrickson asserts that The Citizen’s reporting of her remarks in a news story misstated her position on Common Core. For that reason — to correct the record — we are printing this edited letter from a candidate.]
