The ongoing actions of Washington state legislators have failed our teachers, our students, and our public education system as a whole.

Since the implementation of the Common Core State Standards four years ago, over 100 bills have been introduced to retract or limit the standards in states across the nation.

Common Core has largely been deemed a failure across the board. Yet, despite the harmful effects the Common Core State guidelines have had on student learning, Washington state has failed to pass any bills to repeal the standards.

Washington state is one of few states to have remained compliant with the standards. While some states avoided implementation of the standards at its very start in 2010, five states are currently replacing them and “lawmakers in at least 27 more have proposed delaying or scrapping them,” according to an article by The Seattle Times.

Yet, after four long years of adhering to the guidelines in Washington state, the first two bills requesting to revoke them were presented just last week, and no one expects them to pass.

When asked about the Common Core, Sen. Steve Litzow, the head of the Senate’s education committee, remarked, “We’ve got bigger issues, quite frankly,” according to the same article by The Seattle Times.

Not only is this remark not sensitive to school administrations that are struggling to function under the burden of the Common Core, it is also baseless.  

Sen. Litzow and many other lawmakers have cited the lack of funding for public schools as the top priority in education, while the Common Core issue takes a back seat.

Yet, the Common Core is riddled with hidden costs that have taken many states by surprise, according to the New York Daily News.

The standards require that hundreds of millions of dollars be spent in each state on testing and assessment, teacher training and new Common Core-aligned textbooks and curricula.

There is no excuse, not even money, for choosing to ignore the growing crisis of the Common Core State guidelines. While lawmakers claim the high standards are beneficial for student learning, the vast majority of teachers that actually deal with student learning on a day-to-day basis do not.

From its very birth, the Common Core State Standards have reeked of coercion, bureaucracy and federal overreach. Not only were schools forced into adopting the standards in order to receive funding in the form of Race to the Top grants, but it placed what should be a state issue into the hands of the federal government.

Education has been taken out of the teacher’s hands and into the hands of the federal government – an administration full of bureaucrats who know little to nothing about authentic teaching and learning.

Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal has recently filed a lawsuit against President Barack Obama’s administration under the charges that the new mathematics and English standards represent federal overreach, according to NOLA.

While I am not urging Washington political leaders to follow Jindal’s lead in filing a lawsuit, our state’s legislation should place as much time and focus on repealing the Common Core, as other states.

Common Core creates a data-driven education system, which seeks conformity and a zombie-like adherence to generic and superficial standards. If we want a state that supports critical and creative thinking rather than memorization, we must urge Washington state legislation to take bills that repeal the Common Core seriously.

It is time Washington State followed the rest of the nation in eradicating Common Core State Standards from our curriculum for good.

Education should never be about bureaucracy or test scores.