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A state committee charged with reviewing Utah's adoption of the Common Core doesn't want to get caught up in the politics of the controversial curriculum.
Instead, education experts appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert hope to complete a nonpartisan, objective analysis by December. Leaders of the group urged them to tamp down personal ideologies and pre-conceived notions at their first meeting Monday.
"It's an educational assessment," committee co-chairman Richard Kendall said. "We're not going to deal with the politics. We're not going to deal with all that stuff."
Herbert created the 24-member committee in July as part of a multipronged effort to bring closure to the lingering controversy surrounding the Common Core, which outlines the basic skills a student should master each year in math and English.
Besides appointing the committee, Herbert asked the Utah Attorney General's Office to review any commitments the state may have made to the federal government in adopting the Common Core.
The governor's office also created a website to collect comments from Utahns about the Common Core. That website received more than 7,000 responses, Herbert said. The comments will be turned over to the review committee.
"We want to make sure that our education responsibilities and standards, from top to bottom, are controlled by the state of Utah," Herbert said.
Herbert told members of the committee — mostly representatives from Utah's higher education community — that they should focus on the content of the standards themselves. He said they should ask whether the Common Core represents an improvement over Utah's prior standards and whether they meet the expectations of colleges and universities.
"I want the truth, and I can handle the truth," he said.
The governor said the debate over Common Core had become "filled with animus," with various groups sparring over whether Utah had abandoned local control of education.
Herbert said he hoped the review would help bridge some of the divides that had formed over Common Core.
At the same time, the governor said he was disappointed in the quality of comments submitted by some members of the public, which were intended in part to guide the discussion by committee members.
"Most of them don't have a lot of detail on what they like or don't like about the standards," he said. "That's been a little bit of a surprise. I thought people would have more specifics to offer."
The committee is scheduled to deliver their final report to the governor in December, ahead of next year's legislative session. Recommendations could include keeping, revising or abandoning the Common Core, but those decisions would ultimately be made by the Utah Board of Education.
Matthew Holland, president of Utah Valley University and co-chairman of the committee, said it's important that the state have rigorous standards that prepare students for their futures.
"This is a big, important issue for the state," he said, "something that higher ed, public ed and the general community all have a vested interest in us thinking about carefully."