Wood Joins Call for Common Core Statehouse Hearing

State Rep. Terrie Wood, who represents parts of Darien and Norwalk, has joined the call for a public hearing on Common Core education standards. Here's a news release Wood issued Wednesday:

State Rep. Terrie Wood (R-141st District) joined her fellow House Republican lawmakers today and filed a petition to force the Education committee to hold a public hearing on bills related to the Common Core curriculum and teacher evaluations.

Rep. Wood joined other House Republican legislators in utilizing a seldom used petitioning process, Joint Rule 11, to gather the 51 signatures needed. The petition will allow two bills relating to the Common Core curriculum and teacher evaluations to be raised that were previously denied by the Chairs of the Education committee.

Proposed Bill No. 5078, authored by Rep. Marilyn Giuliano (R-23), would freeze the implementation of the Common Core curriculum for further study until all stakeholders have time to examine its potential effects and reduce classroom evaluations for teachers.

Proposed Bill No. 5331, put forth by the House Republican caucus, calls for

• the creation of  subcommittee of classroom teachers to discuss and share their issues involving the teacher evaluation program,

• reduces the number of formal classroom evaluations to one per school year,

• reduces the amount of goals to be established by each teacher,

• streamlines data management, and

• perhaps most importantly, enables the exclusion of student scores on statewide mastery tests, including the Smarter Balanced assessment test, from being factored into a teacher’s evaluation.

“Our students and citizens deserve a common sense approach to understanding more about common core. It’s the right and fair thing to do,” said Rep. Terrie Wood.

The initial informational forum offered by The Chairs of the Education committee would have had designated speakers with the time constraints. This forum is still scheduled to take place on Friday. A time and date for the petitioned public hearings has not yet been set.