What GOP 2016 Candidates Have to Say about Common Core

With a little less than two years to go until the 2016 presidential contest, GOP contenders are staking out positions on the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms that are markedly to the right of putative front runner Jeb Bush:

• “Most of us believe in less federal government and more decentralized government, particularly with education,” Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, said on “The Kelly File” on Fox News. “For Jeb Bush to run in the primary will be very, very difficult. If you’re going to be for a national curriculum — for Common Core, for No Child Left Behind — this accumulation of power in Washington; that’s not very popular.”

• “Common Core started out as a well-intentioned effort to develop more rigorous curriculum standards,” Senator Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times in 2013. “However, it is increasingly being used by the Obama Administration to turn the Department of Education into what is effectively a national school board. This effort to coerce states into adhering to national curriculum standards is not the best way to help our children attain the best education. Empowering parents, local communities and the individual states is the best approach.”

• “After news of the Republican wave last night that led to the GOP reclaiming control of the U.S. Senate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on the Republican-majority Senate to repeal the Common Core,” Shane Vander Hart reported last November. “Now is the time to honor the 10th Amendment and repeal Common Core,” Senator Cruz said.

• “Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has now put himself on the list of potential Republican candidates for president in 2016, which explains, perhaps, why he is backing off his once outspoken support of  the Common Core State Standards initiative — even while insisting that his original backing made sense,” Valerie Strauss reported in The Washington Post on December 13, 2013. Although Huck lobbied for it in Oklahoma, he later claimed he had problems with its implementation.

• “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker appears to be wavering on his opposition to Common Core, scaling back his demand for a legislative repeal to simply allowing school districts to have a choice in the matter,” Fred Lucas reported in The Blaze on December 18, 2014.

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