Testimony of Robert M. Heard

TESTIMONY OF ROBERT M. HEARD

BOARD OF EDUCATION MEMBER

CLEVELAND MUNICIPAL SCHOOL DISTRICT

Before the

OHIO HOUSE RULES AND REFERENCE COMMITTEE

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

9:00 a.m.

Good morning, Committee Chair Huffman, Speaker Batchelder, Ranking Member Heard, and ladies and gentlemen of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on House Bill 597, the proposed repeal of the Common core State Standards. I believe this is your 5th hearing on the bill and I am grateful for the opportunity to briefly add my thoughts to the already lengthy discussion.

My name is Robert Heard. I am currently employed as a security supervisor for the Cleveland Clinic. I have previously worked as a claims adjustor for State Farm Insurance, as a police officer for the Cleveland Heights Police Department and as an English teacher in Cleveland’s adult education program. Today I come before you in my role as a member of the Board of Education of the Cleveland Municipal School District. I have served on the Cleveland Board since 2004, having been appointed and reappointed now by two different Mayors, and from 2007 to 2009 I served as Chair of our Board. Since 2007 I have also served on the Board of Trustees of the Ohio School Boards Association.

But even more important than my role as school board member, I come before you today as the father of graduates of the Cleveland public schools.

Just this past weekend I drove my youngest daughter back to college for her to begin her senior year at Georgetown College in Kentucky. Just three years ago she graduated from Cleveland’s John Hay Early College High School. In college

1 she now studies with, and essentially competes with, students from across the country. She benefitted from a rigorous curriculum that our school district has in place at John Hay Early College High School. That challenging curriculum is determined by our local school district, and the implementation of the Common Core State Standards will not infringe our ability to establish such a curriculum.

The Common Core State Standards are more rigorous and more challenging than Ohio’s previous standards. That is why the Ohio Board of Education adopted them. The implementation of these standards will better prepare Ohio students to compete in college and in the workforce with students from across the country and around the world. The standards will ensure that Ohio students younger than my daughter will be challenged to meet an even more rigorous academic assessment.

As an appointed Board of Education member I have not had to run for my office, so I don’t pretend to be much of a politician. You however, as members of the Ohio House of Representatives, are of course well practiced in the art of politics. You run for election, you present yourself to the voters of your respective House districts, and those voters chose to send you here to Columbus to represent their interests.

You are also well practiced at the art of legislation. You familiarize yourself with current laws, you determine how and when these laws might be changed, amended, repealed or replaced with new laws, if you believe that doing so is in the best interests of the people who sent you here to represent them.

So I would ask you as you consider this legislation to repeal Common Core to ask yourselves: Is a repeal of the higher standards called for in the Common Core necessary, or even, prudent at this time?

Four years after their adoption by the Ohio Board of Education these standards are just now about to be implemented. Much work, and collaboration, at both the state and local level, has already taken place to prepare teachers and students and their families for the assessments that will be used by all school districts across Ohio to measure our students’ academic progress.

2 It will be quite disruptive to attempt to develop a new set of standards and a new assessment to measure progress toward those new standards at this point in time. If after their implementation, and after a fair period of review, the Common Core State Standards are found lacking, then it might be time to consider appropriately amending the standards. I do not believe that the right time to take that action is before the standards have yet been implemented.

I believe that some members of this Committee have previously served on your local school boards or your local city councils or in county government. So you will understand how I, as a local public official, value and defend the autonomy of my school board to make decisions locally that affect the students and families in my school district. As Ohioans I think we all value local control of education. I think this is evidenced by the fact that in Ohio we have over 600 local school districts.

In Cleveland, as the only municipal school district with a mayor-appointed school board, we clearly value a certain degree of local discretion in how we govern our local schools. If we believed that the Common Core State Standards in any way infringed on the ability of our school board or our chief executive officer to determine our curriculum and our instructional approaches we would not be here today supporting the continued implementation of those standard.

Last week our Board of Education unanimously adopted a Resolution expressing our support of the Common Core State Standards and urging this House to oppose House Bill 597. So on behalf of myself and the entire Cleveland Board of Education, I ask that you oppose House Bill 597.

I appreciate the Committee’s time and attention and thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this morning.