Chris Christie Now Has "Grave Concerns" About Common Core

Apparently seeing his poll numbers tank in what is probably a significant part due to his support of Common Core, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has changed his position on the standards. Here is a set of his contrasting statements on Common Core courtesy of the New Jersey Star Ledger:

Here is what he said in 2013 at a charter school
"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. And with Secretary Duncan. 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."
 
And here's what he said Tuesday in Iowa:
"I have grave concerns about the way this has been done, especially the way the Obama administration has tried to implement it through tying federal funding to these things. And that changes the entire nature of it, from what was initially supposed to be voluntary type system and states could decide on their own to now having federal money tied to it in ways that really, really give me grave concerns. So we're in the midst of re-examination of it in New Jersey. I appointed a commission a few months ago to look at it in in light of these new developments from the Obama administration and they're going to come back to me with a report in the next, I think, six or eight weeks, then we're going to take some action. It is something I'm very concerned about, because in the end education needs to be a local issue."

Governors Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee have also changed their positions.  Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran calls this position change a "flip-flop. Regardless, this now leaves Jeb Bush as the only major potential Republican 2016 presidential candidate who is openly supporting Common Core.  Yet, even Jeb Bush is now studiously avoiding the term Common Core as he and his willing accomplices in the media almost beg people to support him despite his toxic and dangerous support for these academically inferior, developmentally inappropriate and psychologically manipulative standards, ineffective high stakes testing, and invasive data collection system. Time will tell if  Republicans will do that or if they will reject his and his family's long history of top-down, big government fed ed and corporate cronyism.

Posted in Political Aspects of Common Core. Tagged as 2016, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush.

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