JACKSON, Miss. — One group in the state rallied on Tuesday against the Common Core educational standards in Mississippi.
The Mississippi Tea Party sponsored the rally at the Farmer’s Market in Jackson, and held a press conference at the state Capital later in the morning.
“For this year we want the legislature to look at this, study it, and make some assessment on if it will really do what it’s suppose to do,” said Mississippi Tea Party Director Laura Van Overschelde. “We would also like to send a message to the Mississippi Department of Education that if you’re going to commit to something that’s going to teach our children, bring something that will actually work for us.”
Van Overschelde said if there was a new process to educate Mississippi’s children that the people needed to know what it was going to give them.
“You wouldn’t go buy a car unless you knew what color is was, what performance it has,” she said. “And if it’s a used car you would want to know what the weaknesses are in it.”
She reiterated that while the curriculum isn’t laid out under Common Core standards, that the methods can’t be tweaked if teachers think it would help students.
“We don’t have a choice to change it because it’s copyrighted,” said Van Overschelde. “[Proponents] say the standards are nationally bench marked, but I want to see them.”
State Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, spoke to members of the public early Tuesday about why she plans to introduce a bill to put a stop to Common Core in Mississippi.
“Now we have adopted a mathematics frame work that is lacking a pathway to STEM,” she said. “It’s basically geared toward the 30 to 70 percentile ranked student, and is a one size, fits all model.”
Hill said this will make things much harder for kids interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to get the education they want. She plans to introduce a bill this year to stop Common Core in Mississippi.
Parents of school-age children also showed up Tuesday at the Capital to oppose Common Core.
“It’s experimental, nobody really knows what the standards are or what the ultimate goal is,” said Brian Atkinson. “I would just rather not have my kids participate in an experiment.”
The new state Superintendent of Education Carey Wright does support Common Core.
**State Sen. Angela Hill is featured speaking in the above video.
