The last time Dropout Nation took a look at the battle between Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other state officials over his effort to halt the implementation of Common Core, the governor was engaging in the politics of personal destruction, trying to destroy the reputation of Supt. John White, who is pushing ahead with putting the reading and math standards in place. Since then, as expected, the fracas between Jindal and Common Core supporters has moved into the courtroom.

Last week, the state board of education voted to join the suit filed earlier last month against Jindal’s executive order halting Common Core implementation by a cadre of seven families and charter school teachers (with the help of the Choice Foundation and Black Alliance for Educational Options). Days later, Jindal counter-sued the board, asking a state court judge to invalidate the memorandum of understanding it struck with the PARCC consortium to use its Common Core-aligned tests.

Meanwhile outside the courtroom, Jindal’s hopes that his decision to oppose Common Core (after first backing it) would win allies in the Bayou State fell apart this week when U.S. Sen. David Vitter, the likely Republican nominee to succeed the governor declared his backing for the standards. As with Republicans in the state legislature who opposed Jindal’s effort to halt Common Core implementation, Vitter’s endorsement of the standards further isolates the governor, proving once again that his strategy against implementation is a failure.

Yet Jindal continues to oppose Common Core unabated,, The amended motion submitted by the governor to halt the roll-out of Common Core-aligned tests embraces nearly every faulty argument offered up by opponents of the standards at the national level — and embraces their conspiracy-theorizing to boot. Jindal’s argument for canceling the state’s memorandum with PARCC doesn’t stand even basic legal scrutiny. More importantly for reformers across the country, Jindal’s antics in opposing Common Core implementation is weakening much-needed efforts to revamp state education governance.

The amended brief alone is less a work of legal argumentation than a recitation of every anti-Common Core argument that can be cribbed from the texts of the Pioneer Institute and the American Principles Project. But since Dropout Nation has Ginzu-knifed these fairy tales ad nauseam, I won’t spend more time on it.

The heart of Jindal’s complaint is that the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s memorandum with PARCC should be cancelled because it violates the state constitution. How? Because PARCC’s governing board (of which Louisiana is a member) is charged with overseeing the development and roll-out of the assessments, and that a super-majority of board members decide on various issues related to the effort, Jindal argues that the state board is essentially handing off its responsibilities to a “private non-Louisiana entity” and thus, illegally “binding” the state’s citizens to education policy that the state won’t decide (and, as far as Jindal is concerned, will ultimately be decided by the federal government, which supposedly “compelled” the state to strike the memorandum with PARCC as a condition of competiting for Race to the Top funding).

Jindal’s argument would be convincing if not for some inconvenient facts. For one, as Dropout Nation noted last year, PARCC doesn’t set the test proficiency cut scores that are key to ensuring that standards are reinforced; this is a job that is done by the state board and the superintendent. There’s also the fact that Louisiana can still require PARCC to make adjustments to the tests, including add questions that may result from amendments to Common Core’s reading and math standards; this is going to be done for Massachusetts, which amended Common Core as part of adopting the standards four years ago.

This means that the state board still controls the testing and assessment aspect of education policymaking — and that the PARCC is doing is essentially no different than what every testing company does on behalf of the states for which they work. [The consequences of this reality, by the way, is why your editor expressed skepticism to the transparency-as-accountability approach advocated by many Common Core supporters as a replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act’s accountability provisions.]

A bigger problem with Jindal’s argument is that the state’s memorandum with PARCC is perfectly legal based on the wording of the state’s own Competency-Based Education Program law, which was amended two years ago (at the governor’s own behest, by the way) to charge the state board of education with implementing tests based on Common Core, the only set of”nationally recognized content standards” available in any form. As Jindal’s attorneys admit, the law gives the state board of education plenty of leeway in selecting any testing regime or vendor it so chooses. Not only can the state board choose to work with PARCC, Jindal isn’t allowed to use his role as the state’s chief budget administrator to interfere with any of its assessment decisions.

Jindal’s brief, in short, is merely political posturing in legal type. It will likely be tossed out of court — and the governor (along with his attorneys) already anticipate that. But for Jindal, the legal maneuvering, like his decision to oppose Common Core after first supporting it, isn’t based on any first principles legal or ideological. It is less about winning a legal victory than about convincing movement conservatives opposed to Common Core — especially those who wrongly believe that education is akin to indoctrination — that he is truly committed to opposing them After all, they know Jindal is engaged in flip-flopping on an epic scale just so he has a chance to win the Republican presidential nomination.

At the same time, the legal wrangling also gives Jindal the chance to further his scorched earth effort to ruin the reputation of Supt. White and muddy the future political aspirations of state board chair (and political scion) Chas Roemer for having the temerity to stand up against him on behalf of Louisiana’s children. By the time this battle is over, Jindal will have ruined his once-stellar reputation on systemic reform as well as limited his possibilities for higher political office. But he may not mind those losses so long as he also damages his foes.

But for reformers, the tactics Jindal is taking to halt Common Core implementation is a problem — and not just because he may actually succeed. It is also because his antics are giving traditionalists and others ammunition for opposing any overhaul of state education governance that involves placing decision-making solely in the hands of governors.

One of the reasons why systemic reform can be arduous to achieve is because of the byzantine structure of the districts, ed schools, and other clusters that make up public education within states. Most of the time, the governors who are the ones best-positioned to advance systemic reform have the least amount of power over it. Only 15 states allow for governors to appoint chief state school officers on their own or with consultation from state boards of education, while only 35 governors can appoint all or the majority of members on state boards of education. This means that in many cases, the governors must either hope for state boards to appoint reform-minded superintendents or can convince the public to care enough about education to elect the right people to oversee public education.

Reform of state education governance would empower more state chief executives such as former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels to use more than their bully pulpits to transform education. But Jindal’s antics in opposing Common Core may make such overhauls impossible to undertake.

As a result, governors who who don’t have a governance structure that places education under their control will struggle to make things happen unless they either have the political capital (and leadership ability) to make reforms reality, or are in states where the conditions for overhauling public education are already in place. More importantly, byzantine education governance ends up becoming captured by the very politics the 20th century Progressive Era reformers who crafted these structures were trying to avoid. Competing bureaucracies end up in turf battles to justify their existence even when, as in the case of teacher licensing agencies, they shouldn’t exist independent of state education agencies in the first place. As seen in Indiana (where Supt. Glenda Ritz is battling with reformers who control the state board of education), policymaking can end up devolving into senseless sparring matches. And because of such diffusion of authority, no one can be held responsible for policies and practices that continue an education crisis that damages far too many kids.

Reformers have long ago recognized that moving away from byzantine education governance to structures under which the governor is solely in charge of policymaking would both help reform-minded chief executives advance their efforts and lead to coherent, unified decision-making. Most importantly, gubernatorial control means one person can be congratulated for smart decisions and held responsible for bad ones. Some good steps towards that have begun to happen. Last year, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead succeeding in essentially taking over control of the state’s education bureaucracy, while once-and-future Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (a subject of a Dropout Nation profile three years ago) is essentially the state’s chief school officer. Last week, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the outfit run by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, editorialized in favor of ending Arizona’s election of superintendents and making the top education post a gubernatorial appointment.

But citizens and policymakers are only willing to move to gubernatorial control if they can trust that the chief executive in office will behave properly. This means a governor can’t go around using his political office to wage vendettas against those who oppose his efforts;  cannot engage in policymaking that is geared solely toward advancing aspirations for higher office; and cannot embrace Hofstadter-like paranoia when being a leader calls for cool, sensible, thoughtful decision-making. Governors who misbehave both lose the ability to make the case for greater control over education policymaking and hurt the efforts of the movement to advance governance reform in the rest of the nation.

Which is why Jindal’s antics in pushing for the halt of Common Core implementation are so troublesome for governance reform.  By using state agencies and even the courts to engage in a witch hunt against White and his allies on the state board, Jindal has made it much more difficult for reformers in the Bayou State to make a compelling case for giving governors greater power over education policymaking. The fact that Jindal issued a legally-questionable executive order to halt Common Core implementation even after the state legislature rebuffed his legislative efforts promotes the old Progressive Era perception that governors will simply act as dictators (and ignore the separation of powers clauses in state constitutions) just to get their way.

It is hard for reformers to argue that governors should be in charge of education decisions when a currently-seated chief executive shows that he won’t respect either law or engage sensibly in the policymaking process. In the case of Jindal, his actions are undercutting his own demands through his opposition to Common Core that he, not the state board or White, should have the final say over state education decisions. In fact, Jindal’s misbehavior has given White more influence on education policymaking, both at the state and national levels (and thus more credit for the efforts undertaken over the past few years), while obscuring the strong and sensible leadership on systemic reform the governor has shown for most of his tenure.

For both traditionalists and others who are concerned with expanding executive branch power, Jindal’s antics are the best argument against any reform of state education governance. This is a shame. Byzantine educational governance does nothing good either for kids, taxpayers, or even governors. But Jindal may have wrecked education governance reform for the next decade. Thanks for nothing, Bobby.

When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order last month attempting to end implementation of Common Core reading and math standards, he probably thought it was a good idea. Even when the preponderance of the evidence showed this wasn’t so.

Sure, Jindal knew that the public knew that he was opposing the standards after he enthusiastically supported them. Yes, his executive order ending Common Core implementation was opposed by his allies in the state legislature, friends at the state board of education, and even Supt. John White, who have previously backed his efforts on the education front. Jindal even understood that the executive order itself was legally questionable because in the absence of state legislation, only the state board of education and education department (which he did not control) could end implementation.

But as far as Jindal was concerned, it was all worth it. After all, by opposing Common Core implementation, he thought he would win support for his run for the Republican presidential nomination from movement conservatives who oppose the standards. Jindal also thought that by abandoning the standards, his allies among school choice activists within the reform movement (many of whom oppose Common Core out of a misguided fear that the standards would hamstring their ability to provide high-quality education in ways they see fit) would also rally around him; since a large portion of the school choice activist community vote Republican, opposing implementation would also win him some votes.

But as both opinion polls and a lawsuit supporting Common Core implementation filed yesterday by a group of seven families (along with two charter school teachers) along with the Choice Foundation (with help from Black Alliance for Educational Options), Jindal was clearly mistaken. Which should be a lesson to all politicians with aspirations for higher office (especially Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is looking to kibosh the Badger State’s implementation of the standards). Abandoning systemic reform and damaging the futures of children are not strategies for electoral success.

Even before the move to stop Common Core implementation, Jindal wasn’t exactly best-positioned for the Republican presidential nod. This past February, polling outfit Public Policy Polling determined that Jindal was the nation’s least-popular governor, with just a 32 percent approval rating after nearly seven years in office. Certainly the Indian emigre’s son is unpopular with traditionalists within the Bayou State, who opposed his sensible efforts to overhaul teacher evaluations and expand school choice. But Jindal’s penchant for high-handed behavior and viciously settling scores with rivals through the use of his line-item veto powers, along with a fecklessness on state finances that makes California Gov. Jerry Brown look like an old-school fiscal conservative, has also hurt him at home.

Meanwhile on the national level, Jindal finds himself in a crowded field of Republicans who either have stronger movement conservative profiles or better records on both school reform and government reform. This includes Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (whose instigation of last fall’s government shutdown has won him support from the rabble), his colleague in the federal upper house, Rand Paul (who has bolstered his prominence over the past two years with his opposition to further military efforts in the Middle East, as well as taking strong stances on sentencing reform), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (whose record as a strong reformer cannot be questioned), and the aforementioned Walker (who will likely win a second term despite being dogged by a corruption probe).

With low popularity numbers at home and unable to stand out in a crowded field of candidates, Jindal had to do something. So he seized on the opposition to Common Core among the motley crew of movement conservatives, hardcore progressive traditionalists, conservative-leaning school choice activists within the overall school reform movement, and teachers’ union bosses opposed to the use of standards-aligned tests in teacher evaluations. Betting that movement conservatives and choice advocates would rally around his cause (and bolster his presidential aspirations), Jindal reversed his support for Common Core and became part of the opposition.

Over the past few months, Jindal unsuccessfully pushed more-sensible state legislators to pass legislation to end implementation, and even vetoed a measure that 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. Having failed by June to get his way, Jindal went nuclear. He issued the executive order canceling the state’s memorandum of understanding with the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association to implement the standards, as well as demanding White and his staff at the state education department account for every dollar spent on implementation.

Jindal probably figured that White would continue implementing Common Core implementation — and even file suit against the governor for overstepping the limits placed on his role overseeing education policy. He also likely knew that both state legislators and the board of education would also visibly oppose him. Jindal even anticipated that one of his foes, Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne a strong Common Core backer who was already sore with Jindal over his high-handedness (especially in stripping out of the budget $2 million in state tourism funding Dardenne oversaw) would also come out swinging. But Jindal figured that it would all work out to the benefit of his ambitions.

This hasn’t happened. Public Policy Polling’s latest survey of Bayou State preferences in presidential aspirants ranks Jindal in fourth place. Not only does Jindal’s 12 percent rating, trail Cruz (who gets 19 percent of voters surveyed) and Bush (with 17 percent), he even trails former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who isn’t even likely to run for the Republican nomination. Jindal likely couldn’t even carry his own state in a Republican primary. It’s no better on the national level: Jindal trailed eight other aspirants — including Paul, scandal-tarnished New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (a Common Core supporter who has been a strong leader on the reform front), and Bush — garnering just four percent of prospective New Hampshire voters in an NBC-Marist College poll. In Iowa, Jindal came in dead last.

All of Jindal’s grand-standing against Common Core has done nothing to win him support. Movement conservatives, who know that Jindal has flip-flopped his position on the standards, see him as just another cheap-suit politician, while moderate Republicans (who are divided over implementation) just don’t see him as a compelling representative of the party.

Even those movement conservatives who are also Jindal fans thought he overstepped his legal authority. Declared American Spectator writer Quin Hillyer in the Advocate: “[Jindal’s] unilateral abridgement of Common Core runs roughshod over Madisonian principles of executive restraint.” Especially for these conservatives, the goal of quashing Common Core implementation doesn’t justify the means. And for the more-principle minded within the conservative movement, Jindal becomes even more unattractive as a candidate because he is acting like their bete noir, President Barack Obama, who they loathe in part because of his penchant for using executive orders to go around Congressional opposition

Meanwhile Jindal hasn’t exactly won over school choice activists (along with Parent Power advocates) in his own state. In fact, they have thoroughly embarrassed Jindal over the past month by calling him out for opposing standards that can help provide Bayou State children — especially those from poor and minority backgrounds — with the comprehensive college-preparatory learning they deserve. Particularly for charter school operators such as the Choice Foundation as well as school choice advocates such as BAEO, implementing Common Core (and ensuring high-quality education for the vast majority of kids attending traditional district schools) is as important as expanding high-quality options so that families can escape failure mills.

Now, comes Navis Hill v. Jindal, the tort filed yesterday by the sevenBayou State families (along with Choice Foundation with help from BAEO) against Jindal and his staff to stop the governor’s effort to halt Common Core implementation. By working so hard to oppose the standards, Jindal has found himself opposing the very school activists and families (including those from poor and minority households) on whose behalf he has claimed to be working in his more-sensible school reform initiatives. Jindal has essentially turned his allies into opponents — and that won’t bode well for him politically.

But for Jindal, the problem isn’t just that choice advocates are opposing him on an issue on which he thought they would back him. The plaintiffs legitimately argue that Jindal’s executive order and efforts to quash contracts the state education department has already struck to roll out Common Core-aligned tests violate the state constitution, and that his decision has created chaos within the state’s public education system. Because Bayou State legislators have opposed Jindal’s efforts to quash Common Core implementation (and, in fact, have supported the standards), Jindal can’t even claim to be faithfully executing state law. As a result, the Navis Hill families likely have a far stronger shot of halting Jindal’s effort to quash Common Core than their allies in Oklahoma, whose similar suit against the halting of Common Core implementation was unsuccessful because that state’s supreme court ruled that they couldn’t legally question the policymaking privileges of the legislative branch.

Then there’s the hit Jindal has taken to his reputation as a strong leader on advancing systemic reform. Certainly Jindal’s high-handedness has won him foes. But until recently, he deserved credit for standing up and taking action to transform public education for Bayou State kids. It was his strong stance against the state’s educational ancien regime — going so far as to call out the executive director of the NEA affiliate for declaring that poor and minority families are too incompetent to make smart school choices — along with the strong lobbying of Parent Power and school reform groups, that led to the expansion of the state’s voucher program. He also proved himself ready to do the right thing. This included defending his reforms against lawsuits by the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association branches there, to finding funding for the voucher program once a state court judge invalidated the use of dollars from the state’s school funding formula for the purpose.

But by reversing himself on Common Core in the hopes of winning higher office, Jindal has tossed his entire legacy into the trash. By acting as a political opportunist instead of as a strong defender of high-quality standards, Jindal has made a mockery of every word he has spoken and every action he has taken against traditionalists. Even worse, by joining Common Cause with the likes of talk show host Glenn Beck and columnist Michelle Malkin (along with those who should know better such as Jim Stergios and Sandra Stotsky of the Pioneer Institute), he has also embraced the worst of their rhetoric.

Simply put, Jindal has behaved shamefully, and exemplifies perfidy instead of leadership. For that, he doesn’t deserve to be president, much less chief executive of a state in need of strong leadership to address its woeful performance in improving student achievement .

Within just one month, thanks to his opposition to Common Core, Jindal managed two spectacular feats: Further weakening his political aspirations, and losing the few allies he had left. Which, in turn, led to a third: Weakening his once-stellar legacy on advancing systemic reform for all kids. Walker and other politicos should think twice before following Jindal’s example.