Higdon: Senate passes bill to address concerns with Common Core standards

By JIMMY HIGDON
14th District State Senator

Friday, Feb. 19, 2016, 9 p.m. — The seventh week of the 2016 General Assembly marked the halfway point of the 60-day session. It saw the passage of an education measure to reevaluate, and possibly change, Kentucky’s academic standards in classrooms and assessments of what public school students should know.

SEN. JIMMY HIGDON

Senate Bill (SB) 1, a designation reserved for what’s considered the Senate President’s top priority of a session, would reexamine Common Core standards that Kentucky led the nation in adopting six years ago.

Critics have characterized the current standards as bureaucratic burdens that have kept teachers from teaching and misaligned standards with student assessments. Advocates, however, credit the standards with helping Kentucky graduate more of its low-income students than any state in the nation, increase reading and math skills among elementary and middle schools students, improve the ACT score of students and boost graduation rates to an all-time high.

Senate Bill 1 would create a new structure to review academic standards. That would be done by establishing an academic review panel that would include gubernatorial appointees, legislators and the state education commissioner. The bill also sets up a process for persistently low-performing schools to turn around and addresses how the learning gaps of special needs and English-language learning students are gauged. In another provisions of the bill, foreign-language classes and computer classes would be allowed to count as high school arts and humanities course credits. Changes will likely be made to SB 1 in the House of Representatives. We will continue to work on collecting the concerns of constituents and teachers on this matter.

A number of other proposed laws passed the Senate this week and await action in the House of Representatives. Those bills include:

· Senate Bill 5 was introduced to protect county clerks who have inhibitions, based on their religious beliefs, regarding issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. SB 5 removes the county clerk’s name from the license and reinstates a form with a “bride” and “groom” designation. Couples could use this form or the “1st party/2nd party” form instituted by Gov. Beshear following the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. This important legislation passed the Senate by a large margin.

· Senate Bill 126 concerns enclosed three-wheeled vehicles sometimes referred to as “autocycles” that have increased in popularity in recent years. It would specify that autocycles be classified as a type of motorcycle under Kentucky law when dealing with the titling, registering and selling of the vehicles. When autocycles wreck, however, they would be classified as a motor vehicle and not a motorcycle. The legislation also excludes autocycles from a law requiring anti-lock brakes.

· Senate Bill 130 concerns shielding child pornography from public view when prosecuting the pornographer. It would restrict who has access to child pornography used as evidence during criminal trials while keeping the proceedings open to the public.

· Senate Bill 136 is an act relating to controlled substances. It would enhance penalties for trafficking synthetic drugs in addition to prohibiting three drugs currently not addressed by law.

· Senate Bill 137 is a proposed state constitutional amendment relating to legislative redistricting. It would remove the state constitutional requirement that counties not be split and replace it with a requirement that the General Assembly only divide the number of counties necessary to achieve substantial population equality. In addition, SB 137 would require the legislature to remain in session – without pay – if they fail to redistrict as required by law.

With more than half the session now behind us, the last day to request bill drafts to introduce this session is today. The last day for introduction of new Senate bills is March 3. Senate leaders said they hope to move all bills originating in the Senate in the next two weeks. Bills passed out of the House of Representatives would be considered after that.

While the Senate waits for the House of Representatives – where spending bills must originate – to pass out its budget bills, the Senate has moved ahead with hearing testimony on the budget proposed by the governor. The Senate Standing Committee on Appropriations and Revenue has taken testimony on the proposed budgets from cabinets that include justice and health and family services.

If you have any questions or comments about these issues or any other public policy issue, please call me toll-free at 1-800-372-7181 or email me at Jimmy.Higdon@LRC.ky.gov. You can also review the Legislature’s work online at www.lrc.ky.gov.

Senator Jimmy Higdon (R-Lebanon) represents the 14th District including Casey, Marion, Nelson and Spencer counties, as well as part of Jefferson County. He is the Chairman of both the Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection Committee, and the Budget Review Subcommittee on Transportation. He is the Vice Chair of the Licensing, Occupations and Administrative Regulations Committee and the Transportation Committee, as well as a member of the 2012 SS HB 1 Implementation and Oversight Committee; the Budget Review Subcommittee on General Government, Finance, and Public Protection; the Economic Development, Tourism and Labor Committee; the Education Committee; the Health and Welfare Committee; the Program Review and Investigations Committee; and the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund Oversight Committee.

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