George Will: Jeb Is Missing Point of Common Core Opposition

Columnist George Will argued that Jeb Bush was missing the point of the opposition to Common Core on Tuesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel.

Will began by pointing “Mr. Bush is a genuine hero of conservative educational reform, voucher system in Florida, charter schools, quarter of a million people now in charter schools in Florida. 70,000 people receiving tax credit scholarships that gets around Constitutional objections, and wonderful record he has done there”

Will continued, “he thinks people are objecting primarily to the contents of the standards. There’s some of that, but most people feel, as I do, who oppose Common Core. I don’t care if the standards are written by Aristotle, perfected by Shakespeare, approved by Newton, and endorsed by Jefferson, they’re wrong because they’re the thin end of an enormous federal wedge that will inevitably the standards will cause the textbooks to be be aligned with the exams, and you will get a national curriculum which is forbidden by law, but will come in by stealth and indirection. Mr. Bush keeps saying we need to have standards. I think almost — everyone agrees, fine, we will have 50 state standards, and we’ll see which ones are best, that’s the beauty of federalism.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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