Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took a swipe Monday at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, saying that supporters of Common Core are aligning with with Washington bureaucrats and against families that want more control over their children’s education.
Mr. Jindal said it will be good for the GOP to debate the K-12 education standards during the 2016 nomination race, casting it as part of a broader discussion over the proper role of the federal government.
“Do we trust the bureaucrats in D.C., or do we trust parents and local officials to make these decisions,” Mr. Jindal told reporters at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. “I come down on the side of trusting local parents, local teachers and local officials — trusting competition, not thinking it is better to have an unelected elite, a group of bureaucrats in D.C., making these decision for us.”
Common Core backers say that Mr. Jindal and other critics of the standards are misleading voters on the issue, saying the K-12 standards are the bipartisan brainchild of the nation’s governors and have been voluntarily adopted by states, including Louisiana.
They say the standards were not created by the federal government or the president.
Mr. Jindal and Mr. Bush are laying the groundwork for possible presidential bids.
Mr. Bush is leading early national polls, and near the front of the pack in Iowa and New Hampshire, which host the first two nomination contests.
Mr. Jindal, meanwhile, is running in the back of the pack in Iowa and New Hampshire and is dead last nationally, according to the latest Real Clear Politics Average of polls.
“I don’t worry about polling,” Mr. Jindal said.
Mr. Jindal, once a proponent of Common Core, is now one of the fiercest critics of the testing and is pushing to stop it in Louisiana.
Mr. Bush supports the standards and has suggested he will not run away from them during the nomination contest.
“If Gov. Bush were to decide to become a candidate, I am sure that he would be happy to make the case for his views to the electorate, whether it is on Common Core or other issues,” Mr. Jindal said. “As for me, if I were to run, or if I was deciding who to support, one of the issues that I would look at would not only be this issue of Common Core … but also making sure there is not another iteration [of it].”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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