PHOENIX — The head of the Senate Education Committee is blocking the confirmation of one of the governor’s picks for the Board of Education because the nominee supports the Common Core academic standards.
Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, refused to schedule a hearing on Tim Carter. He is the Yavapai County school superintendent.
Carter was involved in crafting the standards. That was too much for Ward to take.
“There’s a large outcry against Common Core,” Ward said, making it clear she wants the standards scrapped.
The move comes a day after Ward and other Senate foes of the standards failed to get a majority of their Senate colleagues to approve legislation blocking the standards.
Lacking majority support from the full Senate, Ward opted to use her position in running the Education Committee and setting the agenda to accomplish the same thing.
“One of the few things I have as the Education (Committee) chair is the ability to try to stop Common Core right here at this Education Committee level,” she said.
“I voted to stop it,” Ward said. “But I couldn’t stop the other people from voting their way.”
Daniel Scarpinato, press aide to Gov. Doug Ducey, refused to say Tuesday whether Ward had informed his boss of her decision to snub Carter, who had shown up for Tuesday’s hearing. Nor would Scarpinato comment on either Ward’s decision or whether the governor believes it is appropriate to sideline the nomination based solely on Carter’s views about Common Core.
Carter would not comment.
Ward’s unilateral action will have no immediate effect. By law, gubernatorial nominees are allowed to serve for up to a year without being confirmed.
And Ward said her decision is not necessarily irrevocable. In essence, the senator said she is putting him on probation.
“I’ve been getting some communications from his district and around the state that people wanted me to kind of give him a ‘testing-the-waters period,’ which I think is great,” she said.
“We’re going to see how he does,” Ward continued. And she said if Carter works out “I think he’ll be brought back for confirmation when we come back in January.”
The committee approved three others nominated by Ducey, but only after grilling them about their views on Common Core.
That was no problem for Jared Taylor, a Gilbert city councilman who also runs the business end of a string of charter schools.
“It’s no secret that I oppose the Common Core standards,” he told the committee.
Sen. David Bradley, D-Tucson, pointed out that the governor, in addressing the Board of Education last week, asked for a review of the standards rather than a wholesale scrapping of them.
Ducey said he would expect the board to keep elements of the standards that make sense. Bradley asked Taylor if he, too, would keep an open mind.
“We should have local standards,” Taylor said. “But where Common Core state standards do have something of value, we should keep them,” he continued. “Why would we ditch them?”
Chuck Schmidt, associate executive director for the Arizona Interscholastic Association, said he supports Ducey’s call for a review.
“I would be looking at focusing on how do we incorporate those local voices into the review process,” he told lawmakers.
Chris Deschene, a former state representative from the Navajo Nation, was noncommittal.
“I’m looking to serve our state with respect to education,” he said in response to questions from Sen. Sylvia Allen, R-Snowflake, about his views on Common Core. Deschene said he wants to see what the review determines before deciding what changes are necessary.
That wasn’t precisely the answer Ward wanted. But it was close enough.
“Of course, I’d love to hear you say, ‘I oppose Common Core,’” she said. “But I’m glad that you have an open mind and you’re willing to work with the governor, with the superintendent, with the other board members as well as people throughout our communities all over the state to make sure that those Arizona standards are what we want for our children.”
In a related development Tuesday, Ward found herself on the losing end of another measure related to Common Core.
On a 15-14 vote, the Senate killed legislation that would have allowed parents to decide their children should not have to take any standardized tests, whether linked to Common Core or any other set of standards.
Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said such a move makes no sense.
“We need to know where students stand,” he said, and if the test results are unreliable because some students don’t take them, parents have no way to compare schools.
