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SALT LAKE CITY — Delegates voted at the recent GOP State Convention on an Anti-Common Core Resolution in an attempt to counter an academic benchmark proposal that has come under fire by conservative groups.
Common Core is a series of academic benchmarks aimed at preparing students for higher education. The program has been adopted by 46 states but has been a point of contention for conservative groups that view the standards as an intrusion into local control by the federal government.
Three moms have made it a point to fight back against Common Core and get it out of Utah schools. Teacher Christel Swasey is among those moms. She home schools her 10-year-old son and says that is largely because of Common Core.
"The thing that I find most concerning about Common Core is that it takes away classic literature by 70 percent for the high school English senior," she said.
Swasey has spent the last year researching Common Core, and that's when she met Renee Braddy and Alisa Ellis — also vocal critics. Together they've become known as Three Moms Against Common Core.
"Anytime you nationalize something, it centralizes power," Braddy said. "And when you centralize power, it removes parents and teachers from having a voice."
All three moms attended the GOP state convention to lobby for the resolution submitted by Cherilyn Eager that calls for Utah's withdrawal from Common Core. The three women passed out fliers and shared their side of the argument.
"The teachers do feel a lot of freedom right now because the teacher assessment system hasn't been put into place," Ellis said.
The thing that I find most concerning about Common Core is that it takes away classic literature by 70 percent for the high school English senior.
–Christel Swasey, teacher
The resolution passed, despite an unfavorable recommendation from the GOP Resolution Review Committee. Members said the resolution contained some "inaccurate or misleading data that is inflammatory in nature."
Earlier this month the State School Board passed a resolution urging Utah's lawmakers to resist the demands calling to remove Utah from the Common Core.
"There's a lot of misinformation out there and we receive a lot of emails from people who have the wrong ideas about what the core standards are all about in Utah and what they actually do and the relationships they create and don't create between us and the federal government," said Joel Coleman with the State Board of Education.
The school board also passed another resolution establishing its position on the storing and sharing of personal student information. That resolution is in response to concerns by some critics that participation in Common Core would lead to Utah student information being stored in a national database.
"We wanted to let the public know through our resolutation that we agree with a lot of the concerns about the data collection and we don't think it should be unnecessarily collected or that student data should ever be shared inappropriately," Coleman said.
However, those state board resolutions still don't satisfy the three moms. They want Utah to take Indiana's lead, where legislators there recently passed a one year "time out" from Common Core bill so there can me more discussion on the quality and impact of the standards.
"I just think this is something that Utah really needs to study closely and become more informed about," Swasey said.
Full transition to the new Utah Core Standards is scheduled to be completed for the 2014-15 academic year. The State School Board says each school district is taking its own steps to adopt the standards.
