The year was 2013. Bruce Springsteen was on the European leg of his “Wrecking Ball” tour. Seagulls squawked warily on the freshly rebuilt piers of the Jersey Shore. And here’s what Governor Chris Christie had to say about Common Core: "We are doing Common Core in New Jersey, and we're going to continue. And this is one of those areas where I have agreed more with the president than not.” Ah yes—rousing if uncharacteristically unprofane words from the state’s chief executive. But after countless years (actually, we counted; it was a little less than two) of study and consideration, Christie is now signaling his intent to abandon the Common Core standards he once championed. You can only imagine our shock at the sudden inconstancy of this resolute man, especially when New Jersey is only in the very first stages of implementing the CCSS-aligned PARCC tests. But at least we know that this reversal isn’t some cynical ploy to grab conservative support in the 2016 Republican primary. After all, what would be the point? His chances of seeing the Oval Office on anything other than a school trip are sinking faster than a fat guy thrown off the George Washington Bridge.
While Christie and fellow erstwhile Common Core supporter Bobby Jindal ponder how best to undermine standards on the way to an eighth-place tie in the New Hampshire primary, at least one Republican executive is showing how real education reform is done by those who care enough to see it through. This week, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval signed a groundbreaking bill creating education savings accounts of roughly $5,000, which can be used to subsidize tuition and associated costs for a child attending a participating private school. Though it will vastly expand school choice for millions of families, the bill was never a slam-dunk proposition: It passed on a party-line vote, and the governor later had to cross his Republican allies by signing a major tax increase to help underwrite the plan. Taken together with an April bill establishing private school tax credits for families under 300 percent of the poverty line, the creation of a new “Achievement School District” for Nevada, and funds to recruit high-quality charter networks to the state, this represents the most productive state legislative session since Indiana’s 2011 spate of education triumphs—and we haven’t even mentioned Reno’s bona fide standards success story. It’s official: Governor Sandoval is the new Ed Reform Idol.
The lesson of the day, therefore, is that politics and education can intersect in some pretty funny ways. It’s as true in presidential races as it is in academic standards. And by the way, those tricky Common Core guidelines are hardly the only ones stirring up controversy. Last week, Wall Street energy analyst Paul Tice decried the Next Generation Science Standards, which have been adopted by thirteen states and the District of Columbia, as a Trojan Horse for climate change activists to push their environmental message on impressionable students. Whether or not anthropogenic global warming should be taught as fact to fifth graders isn’t for the Gadfly to say—we’re not scientists, man. But we find the way the Next Generation standards go about it extremely wanting, and haven’t been shy airing our reservations about them as a whole.
