Potential 2016 presidential candidate Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) is slamming ads paid for by Common Core proponents. He says the commercials provide political cover for Jeb Bush, who has been a champion of the controversial standards.
“I’ve heard the ads,” Jindal said while in Iowa. “They can run all the ads they want telling us why they should have control of education… and that parents aren’t smart enough to know what’s best for their kids. They can do that. But I wouldn’t bet against the parents.”
“Clearly, the folks that are for Common Core have a lot of money,” Jindal told BuzzFeed. “Good for them. I still put my money on the moms and dads.”
The ads, paid for by pro-Common Core nonprofit Collaborative for Student Success, feature Bill Bennett. He was Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan, and admits he is paid to promote the Common Core standards to conservatives. Partners of the Collaborative for Student Success include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the Thomas B. Fordham Institute; Student Achievement Partners, an organization founded by Common Core “architect” and current College Board president David Coleman, and lead writers of the standards Jason Zimba and Susan Pimentel; Stand for Children chapters in various states; and the National PTA.
Though Bush has the backing of many elite establishment GOP donors, he is at sharp odds with grassroots parents and teachers who oppose the nationalized standards and their aligned testing and data collection.
As Breitbart News reported Monday, Bush and his team are desperately trying to retrofit the facts of Common Core to boost Bush’s popularity with the conservative base of the Republican Party.
In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Bush attempted to turn both the Common Core standards initiative and a potential reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) into strongholds of federalism.
“Given all the challenges facing education reform, we need to remember who really should make the decisions about what happens in our schools: state and local authorities and, most important, parents,” Bush wrote.
Indiana parent grassroots organizer Heather Crossin, however, told Breitbart News that Bush’s op-ed was “quite bizarre and an indicator of the fact that even he now realizes that his pro-Common Core stance will most definitely cost him the Republican nomination.”
“It’s a sign of desperation that the bulk of the article is an attempt to convince the reader that he actually believes in such things as local control of our schools, states’ rights, and parents as the ultimate decision makers of their children’s education,” Crossin added. “It’s as if he hopes the reader will forget that his beloved Common Core is the antithesis of these concepts.”
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