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Greenwich's Legislators Question Common Core, Call For Public Hearing

GREENWICH, Conn. -- Greenwich state Reps. Livvy Floren (R-149), Stephen Walko (R-150), and Fred Camillo (R-151) joined fellow House Republican lawmakers Thursday 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, according to a release.

From left, Greenwich state Reps. Stephen Walko, Fred Camillo and Livvy Floren.

From left, Greenwich state Reps. Stephen Walko, Fred Camillo and Livvy Floren.

Photo Credit: Contributed

Floren, Walko, and Camillo joined other House Republican legislators in utilizing a seldom used petitioning process, Joint Rule 11, to gather the 51 signatures needed. The petition would 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. The delegation felt that all stakeholders should be able to have their opinions heard in a public setting.

The petition 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.

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

The chairs of the Education Committee only agreed to have a hearing where the speakers would be selected ahead of time and the discussion controlled by time constraints. A time and date for the petitioned public hearings has not been set yet.

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