Legislation to replace AIMS stalls

A bill to bring state achievement tests in line with new national academic standards has stalled in the Arizona Senate as conservative activists attempt to block the legislation, calling the tougher curriculum a federal effort to usurp local control of education.

Schools statewide have been preparing for the Common Core Standards, which are scheduled to take effect this fall. To complete this transition, the state must replace its current achievement test, Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards, with a new assessment.

But House Bill 2047, which would do just that, now appears unlikely to pass because of conservatives' opposition to Common Core.

The result, according to officials: Arizona schools will move forward with Common Core, which proponents hail as a way to better prepare students for college and careers, but with uncertainty over how students will be tested on the more rigorous standards.

Rep. Doris Goodale, R-Kingman, who's sponsor of the bill and chair of the House Education committee, said her measure would allow the state to test kids on what they would be learning under Common Core, instead of the old standards.

She praised the new standards. . "There's been a huge disconnect between what we're preparing students for and what the real world needs," Goodale said.

But a group of conservative activists says that Common Core is a federal effort to meddle in local education matters using mediocre standards. These complaints echo similar conversations around the country, including in Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska.

Lawmakers said members of the "tea party" and Republican Party rallied against the bill, threatening to unseat them during the next election if they voted for it. The opponents of the bill hoped to halt the progress of Common Core by holding HB 2047 hostage.

"This bill is basically coming in after the fact to legitimatize that which is already done (adoption of Common Core). That's why I'm against it," said Wesley Harris, head of a tea-party group in North Phoenix.

Harris added that he wants to see greater public input before the state invests in a new test with an unknown cost.

The bill in its current form likely won't pass. Friday is the last day for legislation to be heard in committee, but HB 2047 has only been scheduled for one of the two Senate committees to which it was assigned. It needs approval from both committees to move forward.

Failure to pass HB 2047 "would be huge, but we can recover," Goodale said. "It just really puts a monkey wrench in the plan to move forward."

Goodale said she plans to bring back elements of the bill through future amendments.

Spearheaded by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the non-profit group Achieve, Common Core was developed over a number of years by teachers, parents and other education experts across the country to beef up standards for math, reading and writing from kindergarten through 12th grade.

In Arizona, this means introducing some concepts a year earlier than they are taught now and requiring teachers to bring more creative methods to the classroom.

So far, 46 states plus the District of Columbia have adopted Common Core.

Pearl Chang Esau, chief executive of the non-profit Expect More Arizona and head of a task force of business and community leaders that promotes the standards, said the state needs a new test that will be a "meaningful assessment."

The current test "isn't doing the job," Esau said. "It sets the bar for high-school graduation at a 10th-grade level. Tenth grade is not enough."

When the legislative session began, Common Core supporters thought the bill would be an easy sell. It enjoyed support from Gov. Jan Brewer, educators and the business community.

The bill easily passed the House, 50-9, drawing no votes primarily from the most-conservative Republicans.

But the Senate has been more hostile toward the legislation.

Senate President Andy Biggs assigned it to two committees, a tactic often used to stop a bill from advancing.

Biggs, however, denied that was his intent.

"It was not a strategy to kill the bill," Biggs said. But he did say he thought the bill was unnecessary given powers afforded to the State Board of Education.

The state board has the authority to adopt new standards and assessments without the Legislature's consent.

The State Board of Education estimates the new assessment -- Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC -- will cost about $15 per test, not including hefty technology costs associated with taking the test completely online.

The arguments against the bill and Common Core vary, but most critics say they fear the federal government is encroaching on local control of education.

Nancy Genys, a mother of four and member of Arizonans Against Common Core, a group lobbying against HB 2047, believes the standards are the beginning of local curriculum being driven by Common Core.

"Everything that I have read and seen indicates that it will change. Not that it could. It will," Genys said.

The Maricopa County Republican Committee passed a resolution this month announcing its opposition to Common Core, saying federal seed money for PARCC assessments and national incentives for states to adopt college- and career-ready standards indicates the federal government wants to institute a national curriculum.

"It's a Washington, D.C., power grab for the state's right over education," said Laddie Shane, who wrote the resolution. "The PARCC assessment is not even completed yet. … We're going to pass this bill when nobody has even seen a sample test?"

The PARCC assessment is still in development. Only sample questions have been released.

Madison Elementary School District Superintendent Tim Ham said Common Core is not a curriculum but works more like a set of goals, listing broad math and language concepts and skills that students must master at each grade level. Curriculum is ultimately developed by individual school districts and charter groups.

"The 'how you teach' is really local control," Ham said.

Ham said a new assessment would allow schools to accurately account for student learning under Common Core, which is necessary to determine teacher-performance pay and school letter grades.

Arizona is among a handful of states struggling to win public approval of Common Core and PARCC.

Last year, Alabama pulled out of PARCC after mounting opposition against Common Core. In Indiana, a lawmaker proposed slowing the implementation of Common Core by requiring the state's board of education to hold nine public hearings and approve the standards again. That bill has not made it through the Indiana Legislature.

Although the Arizona State Board of Education doesn't need legislative approval to switch to PARCC, two legal statutes would make it difficult to transition cleanly, said Vince Yanez, executive director of the board.

State law requires that students pass AIMS to graduate high school and requires students to take the Stanford 9, a test used to draw national comparisons in student achievement, which is integrated into AIMS but not PARCC.

Failure of HB 2047 may mean testing students on AIMS and PARCC until the state board decides that students have fully been introduced to Common Core and that the PARCC test can fairly be adopted as a graduation requirement, Yanez said. He estimates that won't be until at least 2019.

Chair of the Senate Education Committee, Kimberly Yee, said she supports bringing those two changes up in an amendment, but not through HB 2047, "because it has had so much controversy surrounding it."

Although no vote will be taken, the Senate Education Committee plans to hold an informational hearing on the bill today, where both sides are expected to speak.

Brewer spokesman Matt Benson said even if HB 2047 fails, the governor is optimistic it will go through in some form.

In the Legislature, "ideas get rejected, and they come back to life in different forms," Benson said. "This session is not over yet."

Indianapolis Star reporter Scott Elliott contributed to this article.

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