Friday, May 29, 2015

A Leopard Changing His Spots

There's no denying that Chris Christie is changing position on Common Core, what remains to be seen is whether this move is sincere or not--has he truly seen the light, or is he just saying what he thinks potential voters want to hear?
Gov. Chris Christie is backing away from the use of Common Core school standards, saying the system isn't working for students in New Jersey.

In a speech Thursday, the likely Republican presidential contender will make the case that the standards have brought confusion and frustration to parents and classrooms.

The Common Core standards spell out what academic skills students should master at each grade level. They have been adopted by most states and the federal government, through a grant program, encourages states to use them. But they are unpopular among many parents, teachers, and GOP voters nationwide.

"It's now been five years since Common Core was adopted. And the truth is that it's simply not working," Christie says in excerpts released by his office ahead of the speech at Burlington County College. "Instead of solving problems in our classrooms, it is creating new ones. And when we aren't getting the job done for our children, we need to do something different"...

Christie has been gradually backing away from the support he expressed for the standards less than two years ago, when he declared that "this is one of those areas where I've agreed more with the president than not."

6 comments:

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

I hope Christie, Huckabee and Bush GO AWAY. At least Jindal seems to have a genuine change of heart re: Common Core Standards. Time will tell.

Better would be Cruz and Rand Paul, but we'll just see how electable they are, yes?

pseudotsuga said...

Is this a trick question, Darren? Of COURSE he's holding his finger in the wind!
We might need to watch out, as somebody might pull that finger...

Ellen K said...

The last thing we need is a candidate whose convictions are switched to whichever way the polls blow. Christie and Bush are both off of my list.

maxutils said...

Shocker that a Federally funded, interstate sanctioned education wouldn't work. Again. That's among the reasons the Federal government was not given ANY power to influence public education … and yet, here we are, discussing which candidate will violate the Constitution the least. Federal education siphons money fromlocal districts, gives federal bureaucracy a healthycut, and they send the rest ack to us -- but they get to tell us how to use it. I don't see why, if you care about education, you would vote for any candidate who didn't support eliminating the Department of Education altogether … and to the best of my knowledge, that's Paul and Perry (at least on days when he can remember it's department), and … maybe Santorum. But Santorum has negative chance of winning.

KauaiMark said...

"...the system isn't working for students in New Jersey"

From what I'm seeing, it isn't working in NorCal either.
--Mark

Darren said...

Of course it's working here, Mark! A unicorn just walked by and told me so.