Legislators should ease up on curriculum mandates

In the end, the 2013 Legislature wisely tempered its mandate that Kansas schools recognize “Celebrate Freedom Week” by allowing the K-8 instruction about civics and the founding documents to be conducted anytime during the year, rather than earmarking a specific week in September. Still, many teachers probably will cover those topics this week, because Wednesday is Constitution Day. “I don’t think that every time we have a great idea that we should mandate schools to do that great idea,” state Rep. Ward Cassidy, R-St. Francis, said during that House debate last year. Yet last spring Cassidy offered, and the House passed, his tongue-in-cheek amendment mandating K-12 “instruction and training on the importance and execution of an effective professional handshake.” The underlying financial literary bill died in Senate committee. Here’s hoping that lawmakers take 2015 off from mandating handshaking instruction or lesson planning generally. – Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published September 16, 2014 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Legislators should ease up on curriculum mandates."