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Turning Back the Clock on Common Core

Gov. Bobby Jindal is serious about getting rid of Common Core, as he made clear in announcing a package of legislation last week.

This is a plan that removes Common Core from Louisiana, and replaces it with "high-quality Louisiana standards,” the governor announced at a Wednesday press conference.

While no one questions his intent, some of Jindal’s former allies in the education reform movement have grave doubts about the methodology the governor wants to employ.

“We propose that Louisiana schools use the 2004-2005 grade level expectations — GLEs — and the LEAP and the iLEAP will be administered with a replenished questions bank.”

State Education Supt. John White is dumfounded by the idea.

“I would look at this as a plan to take us back to the past, and take us back in time,” White stated, noting that the proposal reinstates the standards that were in place pre-Katrina.“It takes us back to 2004, when Louisiana’s graduation rate was barely 60 percent,” White notes, adding, “Our graduation rate is up nearly ten points since that time.”

White has been a stalwart advocate for Common Core state standards, and for the standardized tests that pair with them. Known as PARCC assessments, the initial batteries of the high-stakes tests were administered to the state’s public school students last week.

Brigitte Nieland, who oversees education issues for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, says the governor’s proposal appears to be aimed at wiping out all the education progress made during Jindal’s own administration.

“You’re basically saying scrap all of this: scrap the time, the tax dollars that you’re investing in education,” Nieland observed.

Supt. White — originally hand-picked by Jindal to supervise the state’s education reforms — finds this latest plan quite frustrating. He believes ambition is now going to dictate education policy.

“It’s an extreme plan, and it’s driven by politics,” White said candidly. “We don’t need a political plan, and we don’t need an extreme plan from the fringes.”

Nieland says no matter what the governor’s motivations are, his plan is not an improvement.

“It’s just very important that we focus on moving forward in the future and not returning to standards that everyone agrees were woefully inadequate,” Nieland said.

The bills to support Jindal’s announced plan to remove Common Core have not yet been filed.

But one bill that could conceivably give lawmakers a way to leave the whole Common Core issue open for the next governor and legislature to resolve is in the hopper. Baton Rouge Rep. Regina Barrow has filed a bill to prohibit administering high-stakes tests of any kind to Louisiana public school students in the next school year.