It’s August 2015, and Jeb Bush Doesn’t Know What Common Core Means Anymore.
Jeb Bush is trying to distance himself from Common Core.
He is avoiding using the term, and when he was asked about Common Core while campaigning in Iowa on Friday, August 14, 2015, Bush responded, “The term Common Core is so darned poisonous, I don’t even know what it means anymore.”
He’s just a guy who supports “state-created higher standards”:
Bush has previously described the standards as “poisonous politically,” but on Friday, he seemed thoroughly exasperated by the term itself and looked to move past it.“I’m for higher standards – state-created, locally implemented – where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum,” Bush said in Iowa.
He doesn’t say that the government should have no role in creating assessments. Strategic omission since the federal government obviously funded two Common Core assessment consortia, PARCC and Smarter Balanced.
Jeb Bush arrived very late to the “I just want higher standards” party, but here he is, nonetheless. However, Jeb Bush knows full well the well-founded criticisms of the Common Core. On December 1, 2011, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization in which Jeb Bush is active and highly influential, actually passed a model resolution opposing Common Core, the purpose of which was for legislators to carry back to their Common Core-endorsing states in order to formally oppose Common Core.
Here is the text of that resolution:
Resolution Opposing the Implementation of the Common Core StateStandards InitiativeModel ResolutionWHEREAS, high student performance and closing the achievement gap is fundamentally linked to an overall reform of our public education system through a strong system of accountability and transparency built on state standards, andWHEREAS, the responsibility for the education of each child of this nation primarily lies with parents, supported by locally elected school boards and state governments, andWHEREAS, common standards have resulted in increased decision making on issues of state and local significance without the input of state and local stakeholders, andWHEREAS, no empirical evidence indicates that centralized education standards necessarily result in higher student achievement, andWHEREAS, special interest groups can expose the vulnerability of the centralized decision making that governs common standards and lower the standards’ rigor and quality to suit their priorities, andIt’s August 2015, and Jeb Bush Doesn’t Know What Common Core Means Anymore. | deutsch29: