Bobby Jindal Announces Plan to Withdraw Louisiana from Common Core

But the state superintendent of schools says he'll fight to keep the state in The System.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order that would effectively make the Bayou State the fourth to withdraw from Common Core this year, but a top education official vowed to implement the national education standards anyway.

Jindal used the order to defy state lawmakers who support the national education standard by requiring competitive bidding for tests tied to education standards. The move would likely block Common Core-tied testing program, known as PARCC for students in third through eighth grades. The tests administered by PARCC, an acronym for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, have not been purchased yet, and Jindal noted they are among the most expensive available.

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Jindal, who said he is confident the PARCC tests will not be able to compete in a bid, instructed the state Legislature to develop its own set of standards next legislative session to replace the Common Core. He said the state had the right to back out of a 2010 agreement to work with PARCC on implementation of Common Core because subsequent changes to the deal "make Louisiana’s membership in conflict with Louisiana law."

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But John White, the state’s superintendent of schools said he cannot unilaterally remove withdraw Louisiana from the standards.

Incidentally, that WSJ/NBC poll that I mentioned earlier also asked about support for Common Core. They found the public favored it and even conservatives split on it.

Here's what they didn't tell you: The wording of the question employed to get that response:

Just to make sure that everyone has the same information let me describe the Common Core standards in a bit more detail. The Common Core standards are a new set of education standards for English and math that have been set to internationally competitive levels and would be used in every state for students in grades K through 12.

Based on this information, do you support or oppose the adoption and implementation of the Common Core standards in your state?

Let me slightly re-write this question. I will retain the exact same meaning and the exact same effect on the respondent hearing it; I will just make it clearer what this question is asking.

The Common Core standards are flat-out better than the current standards.

Do you support Things Which Are Better?

Please rank the following in the order of your personal preference (ROTATE):

Making things better,

Making things worse,

Keeping things the same, which is keeping them worse than they could be if you chose Better.

You don't have to be a whiz at Common Core skip-counting math techniques to know that that question might produce some skewed results.

posted by Ace at 05:47 PM

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