Review of Louisiana education standards begins Wednesday

The former Florida governor defended his support for Common Core education standards, saying, “if you don’t like Common Core, fine, just make sure your standards are much higher than the ones you had before”.

Over at Trail Guide, the Los Angeles Times’ blog counting us down to Election 2016, there’s a preview of the Republican presidential candidates on education, six of whom are talking about schools with former CNN host Campbell Brown at a forum in New Hampshire.

Jim Garvey, a member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, or BESE, pushed committee members to “be bold in making your recommendations for changes, but keep the bar high”.

“What’s that?” Bush said. “You know if every state has high standards because you have experts who know it, and if you assess to those standards faithfully, you know”. You can see the gashes here. Common Core has never been federally required (four states have never participated in any capacity), but the Obama administration did encourage its adoption through the Race to the Top program, which has fueled criticism that the government was coercing states to take part.

But Christie didn’t back down from that controversial comment in the early-voting state of New Hampshire.

Bush was followed by former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who said that Common Core had outgrown its original objective. But he accused the “teachers union” of being unwilling to relinquish its “monopoly” on Garden State schools and said it’s been the largest stumbling block he’s encountered in bringing effective education reform to the state.

“The states ought to drive this”, Bush said Wednesday.

He maintains that he’s for higher standards in general, whether it’s Common Core or something else.

In an interview, the AFC emphasized that they did invite all Republican candidates and tried to accommodate everyone, but acknowledged that having all Republican candidates would logistically have been hard.

“In the lead up to launching their bids, Jindal and Christie have disavowed Common Core, while Bush and Kasich have held their positions”.

Bush has previously described the term “Common Core” as “poisonous”, but has stood firm behind the policy.

Walker said he wants high standards, but prefers that they be set “by people at the local level”. “He has turned a blind eye to the reasons underlying opposition to Common Core and instead used straw-man arguments to dismiss opponents as relying on “Alice-in- Wonderland logic”.

“The commonality is not as relevant as the highness of them”.

“And the whole objective needs to be about rising student achievement to deal with [this] skills gap that we face where a third of our kids…ends up not being college or career-ready”, Mr. Bush continued. “My bias is, it ought to be as close to parents and communities as possible”, she said.

Another presidential contender, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke rapidly in a lengthy defense of the school choice reforms he has instituted in Louisiana and slammed Common Core – which he initially championed – arguing that the federal government misled them into passing a bill that are not “as great as some people think they are”.