The House Education committee is recommending against forcing the public schools to adopt a statewide grade-by-grade curriculum.

However, in an amended bill that passed out of the committee yesterday, lawmakers would make adopting a core curriculum voluntary at the school complex level, so that all schools feeding into a neighborhood high school would follow the same curriculum.

The original bill would call for an investment of $5 million to implement a model curriculum at each grade level that would be mandatory throughout the state.

Such a move would make teaching consistent across every grade level in the state and would eliminate the problem of students repeating the same material in subsequent grades.

However, that version was opposed by the Department of Education and the Hawai'i State Teachers Union, who noted that they had already been working on implementing a standards-based curriculum that would dictate what each student should be learning at each grade level anyway.

Senate Bill 3059 now moves to the House Finance Committee.