Two Things: Diligently Moving Forward

Yesterday, the Senate and House both advanced joint resolutions on the new standards for math and English/language arts.

1. SJR 75 came out of committee on an 8-4 vote, and is vastly changed. Now it is a resolution to approve the standards with instructions to the SDE and State Board:

SECTION 2. The Legislature requests that the State Board of Education and State Department of Education staff address the following as it develops curriculum frameworks to implement the standards:

A. The State Department of Education shall provide implementation support, including but not limited to examples to assist educators in developing their curriculum;

B. The State Department of Education shall ensure that the standards and accompanying curriculum frameworks provide a foundation for assessments to be implemented on or before the 2017- 2018 school year.

This resolution now would give the SDE the green light to start working with teachers around the state to implement the standards. As it is currently written, this is a great step in the right direction. Kudos should be given to Senator Clark Jolley for proposing the changes to the resolution.

In front of Senate committee, @ClarkJolley says lawmakers need to get out of standards business, leave it to #oklaed.

— Keaton Fox (@keatonfox) March 21, 2016

To be fair, not everybody agreed with Jolley’s changes.

Brecheen: Jolley's amendment is a "grenade that's being thrown on this bill." #oklaed

— Keaton Fox (@keatonfox) March 21, 2016

Just the same, it passed committee, and Senator Brecheen voted for it. Later in the day, it cleared the full Senate on a 30-16 vote.

2.Then yesterday afternoon, the full House debated and passed an amended HJR 1070. The key change is this language:

In other words, this can’t take forever. The resolution now reads to approve the standards, with the State Department of Education still having to receive input from the fifteen outside entities, some of which are not exactly friends of public education.

Now that the SDE would control their own timeline, there’s nothing to delay implementation of the standards. Still, it does add an intermediate task.

HJR passed with a vote of 60-30.

This leaves three options for implementing the standards:

A. Do nothing. The standards will go into effect automatically Thursday even if neither of these bills hits the Governor’s desk.

B. Advance SJR 75 through the House and send it to the Governor. This would speed up adoption of the standards by a day or two.

C. Advance HJR 1070 through the Senate and send it to the Governor. This would speed up adoption of the standards by a day or two and require the SDE to spend additional time listening to people it has already listened to while trying to work with teachers on turning standards into curriculum.

As Representative Cyndi Munson said yesterday on Twitter, many in the House voted no on HJR 1070 (even as amended) because we need to just let the SDE do their jobs at this point.

Let's be clear: a no vote on HJR 1070 allows standards to go into effect on Thurs. w/o delay. Students & educators deserve them now. #oklaed

— Cyndi Munson (@CyndiMunson85) March 21, 2016

If you have a picture in your mind of who usually supports public education and who usually doesn’t, looking at any of these vote counts will only make you scratch your head. It’s never that cut and dry, which is why there was a decent amount of frustration at the end of the day. Many who voted  no (in both the House and Senate) were doing so in response to their constituents, who had contacted them in waves during the past week.

Today is a new day. There will be new things to discuss. Hopefully, moving past the standards brings us one step closer to focusing on the biggest issue our Legislature faces: the budget.