Posted on 05/26/2014 9:12:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Stepping up his criticism, Gov. Bobby Jindal on Wednesday compared Common Core to centralized planning in Russia and predicted the national drive to overhaul academic standards will fail.
“The feds are taking over and rushing this,” Jindal said in a prepared statement released late Wednesday.
“Let’s face it: centralized planning didn’t work in Russia, it’s not working with our health care system and it won’t work in education,” the governor said. “Education is best left to local control.”
The statement represents the latest, and perhaps most pointed, comments that Jindal has made about Common Core, which represents new standards in reading, writing and math.
Chas Roemer, president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the governor’s comments are off target.
“This is about presidential politics,” Roemer said, a reference to Jindal’s possible bid for president in 2016. Roemer is a longtime GOP ally of Jindal’s.
Louisiana adopted the standards in 2010, and the changes are supposed to take full effect for the 2014-15 school year.
However, the issue has been a recurring topic during the three-month legislative session, including repeated but failed efforts to shelve or rewrite the standards and scrap test plans.
Shortly before Jindal’s office released the letter 33 state House members sent another letter to Jindal aimed at derailing the tests scheduled to go along with Common Core.
The lawmakers said they believe the governor has the authority to do so by issuing an executive order or by vetoing test plans approved earlier by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The exams under fire are being developed by a consortium that Louisiana and 16 other states plan to use called the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career.
“There are a number of more acceptable, less intrusive assessment options that still help ensure Louisiana students are getting the best, most rigorous education possible,” the letter says.
The latest message was signed by state Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, Rep. Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, both top critics of Common Core, and 31 other House members.
Jindal said last week that he may act on the issue if lawmakers fail to do so by the legislative session’s June 2 adjournment.
Whether the governor can unilaterally remove Louisiana from the tests has sparked a rift with both Roemer and state Superintendent of Education John White, who was Jindal’s pick for the top public schools job.
White and Roemer contend that they too, not just Jindal, have to agree for the state to drop out of the PARCC test plans.
Neither White nor Roemer favors that move.
White said the letter by Geymann, Henry and others is riddled with errors, and that the Florida plan they cited will result in PARCC substitute tests that cost $34.25 per student compared to $24 per child in Louisiana.
White and Roemer also disputed the governor’s written comment that Common Core is being driven by federal officials, which is a rallying cry of opponents.
Roemer said the letter by lawmakers is one of numerous maneuvers he expects in the final 11 days of the legislative session to undercut Common Core.
“I think they will try to amend bills at the last second,” he said.
White disputed arguments by lawmakers that Jindal has two ways to solely scrap the Common Core test plans.
Jindal is running from this fast. He trusted the folks who handed it to him as a good idea and now he’s realized the plan stinks.
Good.
common core = “no marxist left behind”
White was Jindal’s hand picked education superintendent. Now he’s throwing him under the bus.
I love how the commercial that I see them pimping about Common Core at least 10 times a day that “it’s not political” when it is sooooo agenda driven by the left. I have never heard of this term, our parents never heard of it and their parents haven’t either. Enough of this making up new crap for the good of all people leftist BS. And what’s with the imagery they use in the commercial of 2 large women posing as teachers and a hispanic woman thrown in for diversity... The commercial makes me livid.
Even if Common Core was the most brilliant educational plan ever conceived, why doesn't Gov. Jindal simply say the following. With the exception of federal military training institutions and the federal entities indicated in the Constitution's Clause 17 of Section 8 of Article I, entities under the exclusive legislative control of Congress, the states have never delegated to the feds, via the Constitution, the specific power to define intrastate school policy?
If the Louisiana people think he is such hot stuff, perhaps they should keep him for a while and teach him to speak slowly ... maybe drawl a little. It would also be helpful if his sentences had less than 300 words and 25 different subjects.
You sound like MSNBC.
or Pierce Morgan (purposely misspelled)
I agree, Jindal needs to drawl more. His brain runs faster then his tongue, so he speaks too fast. This guy is off the charts brilliant.
Sorry, Nick. But IMNVHO, the Jindal guy needs to join Toastmasters.* I also am not totally convinced that he has Louisiana under control.
* PS
I like the guy and would vote for him. The fat tattooed lady at Wal-Mart? No way she's gonna go for his act. BTW, I recently heard him on Medved, and he was a little better.
“So essentially Vitter has stepped up to fill that void. Because everyone hates Bobby, David hates Bobby, and presto: The enemy of my enemy is a friend.”
“When Jindal backed a $1.2 billion teaching hospital in New Orleans, Vitter wrote to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development to ask that they reject the state’s application for federal loan insurance and joined forces with the state treasurer and House speaker to come up with their own, cheaper proposal.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3153965/posts
HOORAY Bobby Jindal.
“Common Core” is a joke!
“. BTW, I recently heard him on Medved”
You have a strong stomach, tuning in Medved.
Well, Hollywood metro-sexual Neo-Con RINO though he may well be, Michael has been unfailingly polite to me. Like the blind hog who occasionally finds an acorn in the woods, Medved occasionally does the cause some service.
His interview would even have done Bobby Jindal a whole lot of good, but Injun Bobby demonstrated to one and all that he is so smart he could fluck up a free lunch.
Hollywood metro-sexual Neo-Con RINO Social Liberal though he may well be, Michael's service on that particular show was to eliminate Injun Bobby from the race.
Whateva! IMNVHO, Bobby is ineligible, anyway.
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