Columbia mayor: Charter school operator tries to sidestep ban on Common Core | Opinion

I agreed with my now colleague Maury County Mayor Sheila Butt when, as a state representative in 2015, she co-sponsored legislation to repeal the Common Core academic standards in Tennessee.

Later, I agreed with Gov. Bill Lee when he introduced legislation in 2021 — co-sponsored by my state Sen. Joey Hensley and Rep. Scott Cepicky — to take the additional step of prohibiting Common Core-aligned textbooks and materials from being used in our schools.

Like many public-education advocates — both Democrats and Republicans — I believed that our state should forgo national school standards in favor of a homegrown approach to educating children. I believed then, and I believe now, in the time-honored principle of local control in public education.

That’s why I respectfully disagree with efforts to influence our local school board into green-lighting a charter-school operator that wants to bring any iota of Common Core materials into our community.

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Despite rejection, the charter school operator persists

American Classical Education, a charter operator affiliated with Michigan-based Hillsdale College, is proposing to create taxpayer-funded privately run charters in Middle and West Tennessee. They’ve cherry-picked the counties where they believe they have the easiest path for approval, and Maury County was a direct target. ACE’s preferred instructional approach: A national curriculum known as Core Knowledge, which shares “connective tissue” with Common Core, according to the conservative Fordham Institute think tank.

Perhaps J.C. Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee, said it best when he recently told a local news outlet: “You can’t say you’re against Common Core, but for Core Knowledge. They’re both ideologically from the same place. They’re very interconnected.”

Our local school board wisely rejected ACE in April, despite significant lobbying, if not bullying by ACE representatives and partisan board members who seem to be more interested in scoring a business or political win than solving the many pressing issues we have facing our local school system, and public education as a whole. Public education is in a crisis in this state. And, it’s not because of the quality of our teachers, or the promise of our youth.

But the charter operator refuses to take “no” for answer, and has vowed to appeal the decision and are acting as though they’ve already flipped the vote of at least one of our board members, and their optimism for a different outcome this next round of voting is palpable. But, when the matter comes up again, I hope the school board stands its ground — for reasons including but certainly not limited to ACE’s request for a waiver of the two-year-old state law co-sponsored by Sen. Hensley and Rep. Cepicky.

Perhaps they’ll stand their ground also on the fact that Maury County Public Schools outperformed all charter operators in our state on the ELA retention test. Our proficiency rate? 36%. Simply put, we can’t afford to go in a negative direction on ELA proficiency.

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Maury County won't be bullied

Hensley and Cepicky’s law, which is memorialized in Tennessee’s statute under the heading “Use of Common Core textbooks or materials prohibited," specifically bans teachers and school systems from using educational resources “marketed or otherwise identified as Common Core textbooks or materials.”

In guidance to school systems following passage of the law, the Tennessee Department of Education and state Board of Education made clear: “When evaluating charter school applications for approval, local boards of education and other charter school authorizers will ensure that textbooks and instructional materials proposed by a charter school applicant comply with the law.”

After recent reporting on ACE’s requests for waivers of the Common Core ban, supporters of the charter operator launched a PR campaign to disavow connections to the controversial standards. But ACE can’t escape the fact that developers of Core Knowledge — ACE’s chosen curriculum — market their materials as “fully, and explicitly, aligned” to Common Core.

According to the nonpartisan nonprofit Public School Partners, ACE’s charter proposals in Middle Tennessee closely resemble charter plans in other states that “routinely invoke Common Core alongside Core Knowledge in the fine print of their applications.” Over the past few years, Hillsdale-affiliated charter applications in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas all referenced Core Knowledge as well as Common Core-aligned materials and assessments.

First, it was Hillsdale’s anti-teacher sentiment. Then, it was efforts to bully our local school boards. Now, it’s Common Core. Bottom line: ACE is the last thing we need in Maury County Public Schools, and a charter operator affiliated with Michigan-based Hillsdale College is the last thing we need in Tennessee.

Chaz Molder serves as the mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, and his three children attend Maury County Public Schools. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Columbia mayor: Charter operator tries to sidestep Common Core ban