This afternoon Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal unveiled a series of education-reform proposals, speaking to a small group of reporters and bloggers at the Heritage Foundation.
The core principles of Jindal’s reform plan — expand parent choice and trust parents to make the right choices, limit the role and power of the federal government, and overhaul the way teachers are hired, trained, and rewarded — are unlikely to stir much disagreement among 2016 Republican presidential primary voters. But Jindal remains one of the party’s most vociferous critics of Common Core, setting up a likely early-primary battle with former Florida governor Jeb Bush if, as expected, Jindal announces he’s running for president.
Jindal originally supported Common Core, praising it as recently as 2012. But he said the program, originally touted as a state-based effort to improve education standards, morphed into a system of greater federal control of schools.
“It was a bait-and-switch,” Jindal said. He explained that under the Obama administration’s original “Race to the Top” proposal, states were expected to commit to particular standards, which were still being written. He said that states eventually learned that “Common Core was the only one that would meet all those standards.”
He attributed his changed position on Common Core to “several data points, including listening to my own kids as a parent.” He described his son having an easy time getting the correct answer on a series of math questions, and then struggling to explain how the sum was correct using the Common Core system of squares, boxes, and charts. Jindal noted his son finally simply answered, “It just is.”
“The more parents are exposed to Common Core, the more they’re coming out against it,” Jindal said. “Some Common Core advocates say we’re not telling you what you have to teach — well, of course they are! What gets tested drives what gets taught.” He said that the Common Core’s interpretation of American history was about “grievances and victimhood.”
He noted that he wants the debate about Common Core to be respectful in tone. “I’ve seen parents get pilloried, mocked — people question their intentions and intelligence.#..#There are some folks who had great intentions behind Common Core. I’ve got allies on the other side of this in my state.” But he contended that some proponents of the program simply don’t believe that parents are capable of making the right choice for their children.
(Common Core advocate Bill Bennett, the former secretary of education and current radio talk-show host, was also at the Heritage Foundation Monday for a separate event. Had Bennett arrived a few minutes later or Jindal a few minutes earler, the pair could have debated in the building’s lobby.)
At one point, discussing the success of school-choice programs, Jindal said, “We cited Wisconsin as a great example, as great evidence of what happens when you give school districts more flexibility.” Wisconsin governor Scott Walker no doubt appreciates the praise. In the next sentence, Jindal discussed the success of post-Katrina school-choice programs enacted in New Orleans, but it’s always intriguing when one potential 2016 contender salutes the work of another.
Perhaps Jindal’s best line of the afternoon was his assessment that our current public-education system amounts to “reverse means-testing — those who can afford it move to the districts with the best schools.”