BOISE — The House Education Committee has voted to get rid of Idaho's English, science and math school content standards.

After almost two hours of debate, the committee voted 10-5 to reject the rules establishing the Idaho Content Standards, Idaho's version of Common Core. Local lawmakers Reps. Dorothy Moon, R-Stanley, Barbara Ehardt and Gary Marshall, R-Idaho Falls and Jerald Raymond, R-Menan, all voted to get rid of the standards, although before that Raymond backed another motion that would have kept most of them while getting rid of some supporting content and a senior math requirement. Rep. Chris Abernathy, D-Pocatello, voted to keep the standards.

The state's math and English standards are scheduled for review in 2021 anyway. Raymond said that while he thinks the motion he backed originally, proposed by committee Chairman Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, would have allowed for a smoother transition to something new, he then backed the winning motion so he would have a seat at the table in future discussions. Raymond said he worries about how getting rid of the standards could impact schools financially.

"I'm really concerned about the costs of the motion that passed," he said. "I'm not sure how it's going to affect schools."

The committee's action comes after three days of sometimes passionate public testimony late last month. Many legislative Republicans and the Idaho Freedom Foundation have been pushing to get rid of the standards. The state Board of Education held a series of public hearings on them in 2019 in response to a petition from the IFF before voting to keep them.

Ehardt called getting rid of the standards an opportunity to replace them with something better, comparing it to the House's decision last year to let all the state's administrative rules expire. Gov. Brad Little responded by getting rid of many old or obsolete rules.

"It's not going to be chaos," said Rep. Dorothy Moon, R-Stanley, who has been one of the most vocal opponents of the standards. "The world is not going to end, because this discussion has been going on for almost 10 years now."

Moon, a former science teacher, said the standards have not led test scores to improve and that much of the content is age-inappropriate. She said when she first ran for office, she heard from parents and grandparents who said their children were distraught with their math lessons to the point they don't want to play Yahtzee anymore.

"We're losing an entire generation of kids who don't love math and don't want to go into careers in math," she said.

Democrats, and some Republicans, including Clow and Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra, support keeping the standards. They were adopted in 2011 during Republican C.L. "Butch" Otter's governorship.

“We heard overwhelming support from educators, businesses, parents and education stakeholders from every part of the state for the current content standards," Abernathy said in a statement after the vote. “Idaho teachers believe in the Idaho Content Standards and its positive impact on their students. I am disappointed that the committee did not vote to uphold the wishes of educators. The removal of our content standards will hurt Idaho students.”

All eyes now turn to the Senate Education Committee, whose chairman Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, told Idaho Education News he may hold a vote either on Thursday or Monday. Under the Legislature's rulemaking process, only one chamber needs to approve a rule for it to stay on the books, meaning it is possible the standards could stay in place despite the House committee's action.

Marshall, a former teacher, said he supports the concept of standards but not the ones Idaho has in their current form, viewing them as overly divisive.

"I am opposed to retaining Common Core and Next Generation science standards right now because these things have become so politicized in our state," he said. "We must find a way to depoliticize our education standards. We cannot come back year after year after year after year and be in this same situation. I believe that we can make better standards. I believe that we can depoliticize our standards."