Common Core will be defining issue for GOP presidential contenders in 2015

[Valin]

Washington Examiner

Hugh Hewitt

December 28, 2014

 

If the year ends quietly — not a given with the warnings in Australia and the alerts across Europe — I will spend the New Year's Day Thursday show reviewing the issue that will drive much of the campaign agenda in 2015 and which will define many of the candidates as contenders or pretenders: Common Core, or "Obamacore" as it is increasingly known in center-right circles.

 

Over the past 18 months I have interviewed a number of the leading GOPers on the issue, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, to name just four. Now the issue has drawn the attention even of the left.

 

Professor David Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote about the "Rage Against the Common Core" in the opinion pages of the New York Times, which is a sure fire sign that even the people most out of touch with conservative activists — Berkeley professors, New York Times' editors and readers — are awake to the earthquake rolling through American classrooms. Read all of Kirp's analysis, but the takeaway was that opposition to the standards and the testing behemoth they have spawned is already huge, and growing bigger by the month.

 

(Snip)

 

* Suddenly education "reform" — for as long as the country has existed, a matter primarily of local control — has been federalized. Add in concerns over data collection and profiteering among the cadre of new curriculum experts, and a perfectly toxic political brew is waiting for the GOP candidates.

 

(Snip)

 

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* Suddenly?

 

Rage Against the Common Core

[clearvision]

Hmmm.... so when did this become the number one issue?

[Valin]

Hmmm.... so when did this become the number one issue?

Dec. 14 2014 1:37PM CST

[clearvision]

 

Hmmm.... so when did this become the number one issue?

Dec. 14 2014 1:37PM CST

 

[Valin]