Fallin signs bill repealing Common Core

By Patrick B. McGuigan | Oklahoma Watchdog

OKLAHOMA CITY – Gov. Mary Fallin today repealed the state’s controversial Common Core curriculum.

The “federal overreach tainted a Common Core program created with “well-intentioned goals,” Fallin said. “President Obama and Washington bureaucrats have usurped Common Core in an attempt to influence state education standards.”

Common Core State Standards will be replaced with “new, more rigorous standards” by August 2016, according to House Bill 3399 signed by Fallin.

The governor has not decided whether to seek a waiver from federal strictures to support the process defined in the bill, her staff said

“We are capable of developing our academic standard that will be better than Common Core,” Fallin said in a prepared statement after signing the bill .

The federal government might threaten to pull education funds because of Fallin’s repeal, as Common Core supporters warned, but the governor and her spokesman, Alex Weintz, stressed that if the state is deprived of any federal monies, it will be only a portion of the total.

The measure had passed overwhelmingly in both chambers of the Legislature –- 78-19 in the House and 31-10 in the Senate, on the last day of the session.

You may contact Pat at pmcguigan@watchdog.org .