New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who is mulling a 2016 presidential bid, reversed his position on Common Core and on Thursday proposed that New Jersey drop the education standards.
“It’s now been five years since Common Core was adopted and the truth is that it’s simply not working,” Christie said during a speech at Burlington County College, according to NJ.com. “It has brought only confusion and frustration to our parents and has brought distance between our teachers and the communities where they work.”
Christie called for the state to develop new education standards to replace Common Core.
New Jersey adopted Common Core five years ago, and Christie initially supported the standards.
“We are doing Common Core in New Jersey and we’re going to continue. And this is one of those areas where I have agreed more with the President than not,” Christie said in 2013 during a speech at a conference for the KIPP Public Charter Schools, according to NJ.com. “I think part of the Republican opposition you see in some corners in Congress is a reaction, that knee-jerk reaction that is happening in Washington right now, that if the president likes something the Republicans in Congress don’t. If the Republicans in Congress like something, the president doesn’t.”
But as Republicans increasingly opposed Common Core, Christie grew concerned about the education standards. In February, Christie said he had “grave concerns” about the standards during a speech in Iowa.
Numerous potential Republican presidential candidates have reversed their views on Common Core, including Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). However, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has not backed down from his support for the education standards.
I have no idea what is working and what is not (I did not even know if the standards were fully in place as of last year). Just seems like trying to make himself look more conservative to make his leap into the bid.
Will say something about giving authority back to the states despite common core being a creation of the states and so on. The standard crap.
Exactly – this is just bs “me too”-ism so he can go on record bashing Common Core somehow without actually having to give any specifics. Really? He’s going to send NJ back to the drawing board on education standards when Common Core is, well, what states came up with when they decided to go back to the drawing board on education standards a decade ago? That’s why Jindal, Bush, and Christie himself used to champion it – it was a state-based, not a federal, initiative. Also, what people hate most about CC is not the curriculum per se, but all the testing that goes along with it – testing also initially supported by the usual suspects because it would allow districts to “hold teachers accountable”, i.e. attack traditional teacher tenure and seniority rights. I seriously doubt that’s the part Christie wants to ditch.
This will also create more uncertainty for the teachers, and more work to try and implement something else (whatever that is) before they have a chance to get used to the Common Core standards. They’re so quick to argue that government and schools should be run like a business, right? And uncertainty is bad for business. So now he wants to switch things up for these already hard-working (some would argue over-worked) teachers again? I hope his reform comes with a nice pay raise for the teachers, as well as a proposal to increase the number of teachers to reduce class size.
Sorry I missed it live, but I’d pay money to see Christie turn on a dime.
Maybe in 2018 he can get a job with Big Apple.
Yep just telling the majority of republican primary voters what he thinks they want to hear. If he wins he’ll change it to what he thinks the majority of general voters want to hear. Typical republican strategy.