After some drama on the hill this past week, it looks like the Senate Education Committee is still primed to be the battleground over Common Core. Charwoman Gresham had indicated in a conversation with the AP that she might be in favor of the standards, but quickly backtracked on her statement today.

An email from one of our own bloggers, Casie Jones, was featured prominently in the Tennessean article, which was made public (for some reason…)

In it, Casie made some great points that I want to repost here, as well as some follow up comments with the reporter this Friday:

“I thank you for your continued support of education in Tennessee, but I especially wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for retracting your support of the repeal of Common Core,” Jones wrote Thursday afternoon in the email, which Gresham provided to The Tennessean.

In her email, Jones said she was honored to testify before Gresham in support of Common Core. On Friday, Jones said she wanted to speak with Gresham more about her stance on the standards, and hopes she eventually won’t push for a repeal but understands if the senator is a bit conflicted.

“I can see the back and forth because it’s a political issue really. But if you look at it from the instructional side, it’s the direction that we need to go,” Jones said.

I was excited to hear at first that Senator Gresham had shifted her support, and astonished to see it flip back just as quickly. Could it be that her comments to the AP represented her true feelings and that her public stance before and since are simply a partisan calculation as Casie suggests? If that’s the case, it represents a poor choice to say the least, and Casie’s comments hit it right on the head. We should never be playing politics with our state’s kids.

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