During World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” If we look at the state education legislation passed in the House and the Senate this year, we see that most of our state legislators have boarded the wrong train.
In response, we at the educational freedom coalition are calling for a moratorium on all state education legislation.
Until our legislators get off the education cartel-run train, we need to halt all education legislation.
In our battle against Common Core, we need to play defense this legislative session. There are many bills passed in previous years that need to be repealed at the state level to get our educational liberty back and get us out of Common Core, but we realize that that is not possible this year.
Here is a summary of the legislation that needs to be stopped now, before it becomes law:
1. HB 91 — This bill eliminates the only non-Common Core-based test left, the Georgia High School Graduation Test.
2. SB 89 — This bill gives authority to the appointed State Board of Education over all instructional materials, digital or print. If a local school system wants to adopt materials not on the approved list, they need to team up with four other superintendents or 20 teachers from different school districts to petition the State Board of Education for approval.
3. SB 156 — This bill establishes a crony-capitalist system by establishing a private non-profit foundation as authorized by the appointed charter commission.
4. HB 474 — This bill establishes admission priorities for charter schools and gives preference to “educationally disadvantaged” students.
5. SB 132 — This bill authorizes work-based learning to satisfy the high school graduation requirements for dual enrollment beginning in ninth grade. According to HB 766 from 2014, students will not be compensated for work-based learning.
6. SB 133 — This bill authorizes the governor to appoint an Opportunity School District Superintendent with the sole ability to take authority completely away from locally elected school officials based on school rating scores that do not reflect student achievement directly and hand these schools over to private charter operators.
7. SB 164 — This bill promotes PBIS, a behavior management system that is part of the CCRPI school rating score promoted by the U.S. Department of Education. It is based on the stimulus-response model that de-humanizes students.
8. SB 2 — Allows students to graduate from high school without completing any academic courses after 10th grade. Combined with the elimination of the high school graduation test, there will be no way of measuring the reading, writing, and math abilities of high school graduates.
Links to the bills and a detailed analysis of each bill can be found at www.EducationalFreedomCoalition.com.
Dr. Mary Kay Bacallao
Fayetteville, Ga.
[A former member of the Fayette County Board of Education, Mercer Professor Bacallao came in third in the May 2014 Republican Primary for state school superintendent.]
