Georgia’s Common Core academic standards recently flared up as a campaign issue after raising little heat in this year’s campaigns.
The state Superintendent of Education race between Republican Richard Woods and Democrat Valarie Wilson received a jolt last week from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report that said the state’s teachers find Common Core effectively worded, going against critics’ contention that the standards are confusingly written.
According to the AJC, the Common Core wording received support ranging from 79.1 percent of analytic geometry teachers to 93.5 percent of first grade English/language arts teachers. The Middle Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency conducted the survey last spring for the Georgia Department of Education as part of a Common Core review ordered by Gov. Nathan Deal.
Woods, who’s based his campaign on Common Core opposition, disputed the findings, saying that he has heard Common Core concerns from teachers across the state. The survey was also questioned by Tanya Ditty, state director of the conservative Concerned Women for America, the AJC said.
Meanwhile, Lillian Govus, a Wilson spokeswoman, said Wilson’s campaign has heard many teachers say “we need to stay the course with the standards,” the AJC reported. Wilson strongly supports Common Core.
Common Core has not risen as an issue in the governor’s race between Deal and Democratic challenger Jason Carter. In a recent appearance with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Deal said he plans to monitor Jindal’s anti-Common Core lawsuit against the federal government.
One reason that Common Core has drawn little attention is that many Georgians apparently remain uninformed about the standards. Those who do know about the standards strongly oppose them, a recent poll showed.
According to the SurveyUSA poll for WXIA-TV 11 Alive News released last week, 44 percent of voters surveyed said that they did not know enough about Common Core to say whether they support or oppose the standards.
Among those who felt they could give an opinion, 21 percent support Common Core, while 35 percent oppose it. The margin of error for the poll of 550 likely voters was plus or minus 4.3 percent.
In a breakdown by gender, SurveyUSA said that 47 percent of women and 41 percent of men didn’t have enough information to support or oppose Common Core.
Among those rendering an opinion, Common Core was supported by 23 percent of the males and 19 percent of the females, with 36 percent of the males opposing and 34 percent of the females.
While the poll showed low Common Core support, that’s apparently not an overwhelming hurdle for Wilson’s campaign. Despite her strong Common Core backing, Wilson increased her voter support to 44 percent, while Woods received 46 percent, the poll found.
Common Core was supported by 13 percent of Republicans in the poll, 31 percent of the Democrats and 20 percent of independent voters. The standards drew opposition from 46 percent of Republicans, 19 percent of Democrats and 44 percent independents. A total of 50 percent of Democrats, 42 percent of Republicans and 36 percent independents said they didn’t know enough to express their support or opposition.
Among Woods supporters, 29 percent support Common Core, while 65 percent oppose it. The standards received support from 65 percent of Wilson voters, while 25 percent oppose it. Among undecided voters, 6 percent support Common Core and 10 percent oppose it.
While Georgia’s teachers gave strong backing to Common Core, support among educators has been eroding nationally.
In Tennessee, just 39 percent of teachers believe that teaching to the standards will improve student learning, compared with 60 percent last year, according to a Sept. 24 Nashville Tennessean article.
The 2014 survey was conducted by Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, the newspaper said.
The survey also found that 56 percent of the 27,000 Tennessee teachers who responded want to abandon the standards, while 13 percent wish to to delay them. Just 31 percent want to proceed. A 2013 survey did not ask these questions, the newspaper said.
A national poll conducted last spring found that 46 percent of teachers now back Common Core, with three-quarters backing the standards in 2013, according to the Aug. 19 Education Week.
The poll was conducted by Education Next, a journal published by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
In a general survey of 5,000 adults, Education Next found that 53 percent still support Common Core, while 65 percent favored the standards in 2013.
