Anti-Common Core activist group holds meeting with Superintendent Richard Woods, Rep. Tom Rice
NORCROSS — Tom Rice called it democracy in action, and several of the supporters of the grassroots effort were buoyed by the chance to organize their cause and spread their beliefs.
A first-of-its-kind all-day meeting organized by the group Georgians to Stop Common Core met on Saturday at Peachtree Corners Baptist Church where Rice, a state representative who represents the area opened the meeting with a prayer. State School Superintendent Richard Woods, who campaigned against Common Core during last year’s election, also attended the meeting.
“My position has not changed,” Woods told the crowd. “People know that, they know that in the government, sometimes we just smile and we agree to disagree. They know exactly where I stand on these issues and where we’re at. Thank you for everything you’ve done. It’s a fight worth fighting, hang in there and we will get there.”
The focus was on Common Core’s impact on Georgians and how to restore quality education and local control. The group believes the standards were “hurriedly adopted” in Georgia without legislative process to make Georgia eligible to receive funding in the Race to the Top grant competition in 2010.
Rice said the group of about 50 people from across Georgia reminded him of the Puritans and people in Salem, Mass. and Boston in the 17th century who gathered to “make their hearts and minds known to those that they had selected as their leaders. So today is just a manifestation of that in the 21st century, and that’s a great thing to see.”
The group discussed the controversial implementation of Common Core and the recent change in framework of the Advanced Placement U.S. History course.
“The point is you people are the ones that are making a difference,” Rice said. “The fact that you’re here to make your voices known on all of these issues. And all the work that’s been done really constitutes the ability to move people’s minds in the leadership roles that are responsible for the issues you’re concerned about.”
Woods called it a challenge for his office, and its inability to deal or address things fully.
“Within the office itself, you have to line up so many dots just to get something done, sometimes those dots are moving” he said.
Woods said he is looking inside and outside of the General Assembly on efforts such as opposing Common Core.
“One of my goals is sort of triage, stop the bleeding,” Woods said, and added that the state in the next two years would adopt standards in science and social studies.
A former history and social studies teacher, Woods said there are good standards available not associated with Common Core, including some from South Carolina.
“Even though our standards are rated a ‘C,’ if we can improve upon them, maybe we can keep the standards,” he said. “My objective is that Georgia completely owns these two sets of standards.”
Woods also reiterated his stance about teaching the Constitution, giving pocket Constitutions and Declarations of Independence to fifth-graders, as well as teaching about the founding fathers.
Several of the people who attended the event have voiced concerns at Gwinnett County Board of Education meetings in recent months.
Their concerns are that some textbooks are age inappropriate for children in the fifth grade, for example, to read about same-sex marriage or stem cell research. They call these textbooks “twisted, distorted and half-truths.”
“These are just topics where the information is leading and they ask children to develop opinions on that,” said Gwinnett resident Sara Salsbury.
One of Salsbury’s concerns is books that are categorized as English/Language Arts, but use historical examples that are biased.
Fellow Gwinnett resident Jane Wise said the process to select textbooks is flawed because pilot programs often place textbooks in classrooms before teachers and parents have a chance to review them.
“What we’re asking is our children not be exposed to this,” Wise said. “It’s not OK, and they continue to tell us, ‘Well, we don’t want to interrupt the process. We don’t want to usurp the teacher’s authority,’ but these are our children.”
Teri Sasseville of Fulton County is a co-founder of Georgians to Stop Common Core, and helped organize Saturday’s meeting.
“We’re hoping to get folks connected to others in their area, and we hope this is the beginning of a statewide network so they can build movements closer to home,” she said. “It’s the biggest, most sweeping change to education in our lifetimes, and most people, to this day, don’t know about it. So public awareness is really one of our big missions.”
