(Des Moines, IA) Delegates at the Republican Party of Iowa State Convention, held at the Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Saturday, passed a platform plank opposing the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards and student data collection. The platform plank was introduced on the convention floor by Heather Stancil, a state delegate from Earlham who is a new member of the Iowa GOP State Central Committee. The platform submitted by the state platform committee did not include any language dealing with education standards. The submitted platform did include planks affirming parental authority and control of their student’s education, as well as, a school choice plank.
During floor debate most opposition to the plank dealt with making the platform simpler instead of discussing specific programs, only one person opposed to the plank spoke in favor of Common Core. The plank passed on a 887 to 462 vote.
Here’s the language that will now be included in the state party platform:
We support full local control in schools and therefore oppose any forced national education standard such as the Common Core (now called Iowa Core) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). We also call for a halt to the public funding of any of their supportive components (i.e. bandwidth expansion to support online nationalized testing, collection and transfer of academic and non-academic student data to third parties, and contractual agreements with out-of-state testing consortiums).
Stancil told Caffeinated Thoughts that Republican elected officials who continue to support Common Core, NGSS, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, taxpayer funded bandwidth expansion to support a Common core test, or data mining of students to be shared with anyone outside of Iowa, need to be reminded that they will now be doing so in direct opposition to the official Iowa Republican platform.
