TennCore is better way to go

Gov. Bill Haslam discusses the Common Core State Standards during a meeting with local educators at Indian Trail Intermediate School.
Gov. Bill Haslam discusses the Common Core State Standards during a meeting with local educators at Indian Trail Intermediate School.

Here's the thing.

Tennessee students need high academic standards, ones that will push them out of their comfort zones and into learning that can only enhance their college readiness and/or job preparation.

Tennessee teachers, parents and students -- many of them -- don't care for the Common Core standards in math and English adopted by the state in 2010. Many said the standards were confusing, unworkable and, for some students, unachievable. Others, if we're being honest, didn't want them because they later were embraced by President Obama.

The Tennessee House, on Monday, voted 97-0 -- that's Republicans, Democrats, teacher/legislators, businessperson/legislators, Bible-as-a-state-book supporters, Bible-as-a-state-book opponents -- to repeal and replace (in the 2017-18 school year) the Common Core standards. In their place will be a two-step process that will enshrine Gov. Bill Haslam's current review of state standards and add a secondary vetting by a panel appointed and approved by the legislature.

photo Gov. Bill Haslam discusses the Common Core State Standards during a meeting with local educators at Indian Trail Intermediate School.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Billy Spivey, R-Lewisburg, was expected to be passed by the Senate on Tuesday before being sent to Haslam for his approval.

Haslam's review process includes panels of Tennessee-based experts and teachers as well as a website where teachers and others can voice their thoughts. The goal is to have high standards developed by Tennesseans for Tennesseans, and we think this way -- TennCore, if you will -- is a sound way to get there.

The bill basically does for the state what U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander's legislation that passed out of the Senate Education Committee last week would do for all states -- allow them to create their own standards without interference or pressure from Washington, D.C. That legislation will go before the entire Senate later this spring.

* The House, passing 80 bills in a marathon session Monday, also voted 85-8 to mandate that Tennessee students pass what amounts to a basic civics test before they graduate from high school. The measure now goes on to the Senate.

The test is the same one immigrants must pass -- and 92 percent pass it -- before becoming United States citizens.

In an era where many teachers and parents -- and students, no doubt -- want to see testing scaled back, it is yet another test. But if students have paid a modicum of attention along the way, they shouldn't expect to have trouble with it.

Among its questions, according to bill sponsor Rep. Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga, are what "are the two parts of Congress" and "who the president and the vice president of the United States are."

Even given those softballs, students only have to score at least 70 on the test and can take it as many times as they need in order to pass.

All in all, it doesn't seem much of a burden. And, who knows, some students might find a new appreciation for the sound system of government our Founding Fathers created.

* In what served largely as a grandstanding bill, the House also passed 93-0 a bill that would require Tennessee police agencies to adopt and implement written policies banning racial profiling.

While the bill got the unanimous approval of all whites, blacks, Republicans and Democrats who voted, it only mandates what most Tennessee police agencies already have.

A 93-0 vote is nice -- and is, of course, a nod to the high-profile death of Michael Brown last summer in Ferguson, Mo., in which a policeman was exonerated -- but it by itself won't change the seat-of-the-pants policing that necessarily occurs on the streets every day in every town.

Police around the country make life and death decisions every day, and we want them to do that to protect us. We expect them to be trained well, to use their best judgments and to pursue people they suspect of committing a crime.

If we can't have at least those expectations of them, we won't ever feel safe.

* Now heading to Gov. Haslam's desk is a revised bill on longevity bonuses for state employees that was passed 26-3 by the Senate last week and passed 70-26 by the House Monday.

The governor had originally sought to fold the bonuses into the salaries of state workers and use the money to fund merit raises for employees based on their evaluations. But that met with bipartisan opposition, and the legislation was modified. It now applies only to new hires.

That's fair because potential new hires can know going in that the longevity pay won't be there for them, and current employees who may have accepted their jobs because of the existence of longevity pay will know they won't be shorted.

In today's economy, the likes of defined pension benefits and longevity pay are going the way of the passenger pigeon, but, wherever possible and it's not always possible, those who signed on for a particular benefit should receive it.

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