No one should be shocked by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s move today to issue an executive order ending the state’s implementation of Common Core reading and math standards. For the past few months, the Republican presidential aspirant has had little success cajoling his colleagues in the state legislature to abandon the standards, and has been strongly opposed in his efforts by his own education czar, John White (who is still championing implementation). So for Jindal, a lame-duck governor who faces long odds in his presidential bid, signing the executive order to stop Common Core implementation is just a last desperate effort to bolster support for his presidential bid at the expense of the futures of Bayou State kids deserving of college-preparatory curricula.
This desperate effort by Jindal to fulfill his presidential ambitions is especially crass when you look closely at his main argument for opposing Common Core: The supposed federal intrusion represented by the Obama Administration’s support for voluntary efforts by states to implement the standards. Jindal was proud to have federal backing for his systemic reform efforts five years ago when he proclaimed that Louisiana was in “great position” to win a share of the Race to the Top competition. Jindal was also perfectly happy with federal support three years ago when the Bayou State received a share of the $200 million in federal funding provided to states that lost out in one of the Race to the Top competitions. When the Obama Administration began its counterproductive gambit to eviscerate the No Child Left Behind Act’s accountability provisions, Jindal was willing to go along (and got its waiver to boot). Like his counterpart in Texas, Rick Perry, Jindal was for a strong federal role in education before he was against it.
Simply put, Bobby Jindal has decided to debase what has been a strong record of advancing systemic reform — and helping Bayou State children succeed — in order to win higher office. He should be ashamed of himself, especially as a father, for sacrificing the futures of children on the alter of ambition. Especially given that the Bayou State’s longstanding perpetuation of educational abuse and neglect on kids, especially those from poor and minority households such as his own, Jindal’s opposition to providing kids with college-preparatory curricula is both intellectually indefensible and just plain immoral.
But Common Core supporters and other reformers shouldn’t get too dismayed by this news. For one, expect White and the state’s board of education to fight Jindal in court. This is because Jindal’s executive order may not actually be able to cancel the state’s memorandum of understanding with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association to implement the standards. While Jindal will be able to publicly state that he is ending Common Core implementation, he probably can’t actually do so. Also, keep in mind that state funding for implementation remains in place, effectively limiting his ability to stop the state education department from continuing its implementation effort. While Jindal’s executive order will target that spending by demanding that White account for all dollars spent by the state on Common Core-aligned tests developed by the PARCC coalition, Jindal will have difficulty making any aspect of the executive order a reality.
There’s also the fact that Jindal’s efforts to abandon Common Core have not gotten widespread support in Louisiana. Besides finding himself battling with White and his allies on the state board of education, Jindal found no allies for his efforts in the state legislature. Last month, legislators passed House Bill 953, which would have kept the Bayou State’s Common Core implementation efforts in place while slightly amending the standards as Massachusetts and other states have done. The legislature’s passage of the law, along with Jindal’s veto of it, fully exposed the falseness of Jindal’s arguments that the standards were some form of federal encroachment on the state’s role in shaping education.
Given that the state legislature has done Jindal’s bidding in the past — including passing the sensible expansion of the Bayou State’s school choice program and a spate of teacher quality reforms — this opposition to Jindal’s push against Common Core is particularly amazing. Expect the legislature to fight back against Jindal’s push against Common Core if disability advocates opposed to Jindal’s line-item of $4 million from the state budget for services to their constituency can rally legislators to hold a special session to overturn it.
Meanwhile there are plenty of lessons for Common Core supporters and other reformers to learn from Jindal’s latest move.
The first? Reformers must continually build networks of support within their communities. As reformers in Washington, D.C., have learned — and as counterparts in California found out the hard way — it isn’t enough to hope that favored politicians retain office. Reform must be sustainable regardless of who sits inside a governor’s mansion. Jindal’s reversal of support for Common Core has also made clear that reform must also be sustainable even when political sponsors engage in careerist flip-flopping. Always remember this: No politician is deserving of blind trust.
The second lesson: Reformers must constantly inform politicians, especially city council members, about why they must back particular policies that advance systemic overhauls. As seen in Louisiana with the strong backing for Common Core among elected state board members and legislators, when you can’t count on support from one politician, always have others in your corner. This doesn’t mean that an opponent of a particular reform (or even all reforms) will back down. But it does give reformers the ability to put that politician on the defensive, especially when they have decided to reverse course for the sake of career aspirations.
Lesson number three: Conservative reformers who are players in Republican Party ranks need to do a better job of challenging movement conservative thinking. One reason why Jindal was so willing to abandon his support for Common Core was because conservative reformers backing the standards didn’t do a good job mince-meating the arguments advanced by the likes of the American Principles Project and other anti-Common Core groups working to rally movement conservative opposition. Forcefully pointing out to movement conservatives that what passes for curricula in American public education today doesn’t work for anyone’s children, including their own, along with refuting conspiracy theories, is key. At the same time, conservative reformers must also strongly address the various reasons of principle that drive opposition to the standards among movement conservatives. This is especially important because many of the arguments against Common Core can also be used to rally movement conservative opposition to school choice and other reforms.
Fourth lesson: Reformers must insist on doing Common Core implementation correctly. There are plenty of reasons for the opposition to the standards, including the reality that some people just don’t believe that poor and minority kids are deserving of comprehensive college-preparatory curricula. But it is hard to defend implementation of Common Core when it isn’t always being done right. Particularly for Common Core supporters, the opposition among some in their crowd to the strong (and common) accountability measures put in place by No Child has meant that they have actually aided the opposition to the standards itself.
Finally, reformers need to both provide strong backing for their allies when they do right and hold their feet to the fire when they backslide. If Jindal knew that his opposition to Common Core would result in losing key backing for his presidential aspirations, he wouldn’t even bother pursuing this course so strongly. For reformers, this means embracing a single issue-voter approach that crosses party lines, and being willing to publicly challenge a candidate opposed to systemic reform even if they share common cause with them on other issues. As the legendary Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League would likely say, you only support those politicians who address your most-important concerns.
It is unfortunate, even amoral, that Jindal has essentially debased his otherwise strong legacy of advancing systemic reform for all children. But the good news is that Common Core supporters and other reformers can still beat back Jindal’s efforts to end implementation of the standards. And in the process, continue systemic reform in the rest of the nation.