Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal took his anti-Common Core message to the nation's capital on Monday, and he said there's a growing movement of moms that supports his position on the controversial education guidelines.
"Now there's a third pesky group called parents and moms that are against Common Core, and I wouldn't bet against them," Jindal said, according to
The Daily Signal.
Calling the Common Core State Standards Initiative a "monopoly government-provided education system," Jindal spoke to reporters at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. about the controversial set of federal standards that have been adopted by several states. Critics of the program say it's a way for the government to control what goes on in the classroom, adding that education is better served at the state and local levels.
Jindal, a potential Republican
candidate for president, said he's seen "hundreds" of moms debate Common Core at town hall meetings, and he even met with a group of them at his residence in Baton Rouge.
What Jindal, who outlines his education plan in a 42-page document called
"K-12 Education Reform: a Roadmap," advocates is school choice.
Jindal said the moms he met with are "the most eloquent, persuasive supporters of school choice."
"I got my first school-choice bill done in Louisiana with a Democrat-controlled legislature," said Jindal, highlighting the fact that school choice can be appealing to both political parties.
"One of the reasons I'm confident we will get rid of Common Core is because it's not just Republicans, it's not just conservatives … it's everyday moms and dads who aren't political themselves who look at this and go, 'They're making a mess of my child's education.'"
Jindal told a personal story during his speech related to his son, who was 7 at the time. As part of Common Core, students in his class were required to answer math problems with both the answer and how they got to the answer.
"He got every answer right, with more than enough time to spare," Jindal said. The governor added that his son wrote "because it is" next to each question asking to explain why each of the answers were correct.
"I really couldn't reprimand him because he was right," Jindal said.
Jindal has yet to commit to the race for the White House, but he's been traveling the country —
and the world — touting
his agenda to see if it sticks.
Common Core is a set of standards that outline minimums for what students should know in English and math when they finish each grade. Forty-six states joined the program when the standards were released in 2010, but three have since abandoned it — Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Missouri, North Carolina, and Louisiana are working to purge it from their education systems, while another group of states — Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia — never joined the program at all.
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