Full repeal of Common Core fails in Miss. Senate

JACKSON, Miss. — Tea Party conservatives pushing for a full repeal of Common Core protested by voting "present" on a state Senate bill they claimed fails to require Mississippi to adopt new educational standards.

The measure passed the floor anyway Wednesday by a vote of 31-16. If it becomes law, it will create the Mississippi Commission on College and Career Readiness, whose members will recommend new educational standards to replace the Common Core State Standards adopted nearly five years ago.

But the bill doesn't require the Board of Education to implement the commission's recommendations – just to listen to them – prompting concern it will do nothing to change its standards.

An amendment offered by Republican state Sen. Angela Hill would have required the adoption of the commission's recommendations. It also would have prohibited the recommendations from mirroring Common Core in any way.

Hill lobbied hard for the amendment despite the objections of Republican Sen. Gray Tollison, chairman of the Education Committee, who urged his colleagues to reject it.

"Let the educators work on this, because they're the experts," Tollison said.

Tollison said the state has spent several million dollars gearing up for full implementation of Common Core and mandating its elimination with a piece of legislation would squander that effort. He wanted the commission and state education leaders to work together to craft new standards without having to completely shelve the existing ones.

But GOP Sens. Michael Watson, Melanie Sojourner, and Chris McDaniel joined Hill in pushing for the amendment in a debate that lasted more than an hour.

"Without the implementation of this amendment," McDaniel said, "we've done nothing."

The amendment ultimately failed 37-13.

And though Hill voted in favor of the bill despite losing her amendment, her colleagues did not. McDaniel, Sojourner and Watson all voted "present" in protest.

The measure now goes to the House for consideration.