The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers (71-18 House, 31-10 Senate).
Four and a half states never adopted the federal program.
Texas: In 2010, Gov. Rick Perry wrote the White House and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to say that Texas leads the way in education reform and would not waste tax dollars on “the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national standards and tests.”
Alaska: In 2009, Governor Palin said, “The State of Alaska fully believes that schools must have high expectations of students. But high expectations are not always created by new, mandated federal standards written on paper. They are created in the home, the community and the classroom.”
Virginia: In 2010, the Virginia Board of Education said it was “committed to the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) program and opposed to adoption of the newly developed Common Core State Standard.”
Nebraska: Nebraska officials said their schools cover most of the same material as Common Core, just at different times, and questioned the wisdom of states adopting standards before they’d even been written.
Minnesota: In 2010, Minnesota agreed to the standards for English, but educators and politicians liked their own math standards better.
Sources:
- https://www.ok.gov/triton/modules/newsroom/newsroom_article.php?id=223&article_id=14279
- http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/11/unlike_alabama_these_five_stat.html
- http://palin4america.com/2013/04/reject-common-core-standards-wednesday/
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