Jeb Bush begins to pivot away from Common Core

“Even if we don’t all agree on Common Core, there are more important principles for us to agree on,” Bush told the education-policy crowd gathered in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C.

Those areas of potential consensus, Bush proposed, could be a “marketplace” of school choices, performance-based pay for teachers or greater adoption of digital technology in the classroom.

“It’s going to require a big political fight,” Bush said. “Monopolies do not go quietly into the night.”

Bush has stressed these ideas before, but his renewed emphasis on them over the Common Core debate hinted at a new strategy.

On school choice especially, Bush stressed the authority of states over the federal government to make education-related decisions — a point that has been at the heart of the controversy over Common Core, even though the standards were developed and implemented at the discretion of the states.

“Where the child goes, the dollar should go as well,” Bush said. “When that happens, we’ll see major reforms and major gains for America’s children and the federal government will go back to playing the supportive and completely secondary role it should be playing.”

But even as Bush laid out what might be his focus in the education policy sphere moving forward toward 2016, he still did not eschew the controversial debate over the Common Core standards, which he described as “troubling.”

“There is no question we need higher academic standards and, at the local level, diverse high-quality content and curricula,” Bush said. “And, in my view, the rigor of the Common Core state standards must be the new minimum in classrooms.”

“For those states choosing a path other than Common Core,” Bush added, “I say this: Aim even higher. Be bolder. Raise standards and ask more of our students and the system.”

One of those states is Indiana, whose Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, is also weighing a bid for the presidency. Indiana accepted the Common Core standards only to later reject them, although some education policymakers have noted that the state’s new standards very closely resemble Common Core.

The national education standards in mathematics and English have created a stir among some conservatives, who have argued the standards have taken away state authority to determine curricula. In fact, the standards do not dictate curriculum, only the basic skill sets that must be met at each grade level. The federal government did incentivize states to adopt the standards with education funding.

The issue appears poised to become a major sticking point in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. One potential contender, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, sued the federal government earlier this year over Common Core.

But Bush has not minced words in the debate, and in the past has dismissed criticisms of Common Core as “political.”

As he tackled the Common Core issue Thursday, Bush also did not shy from supporting the testing that measures performance to meet national education standards, which he called “critical.”

“There is a lively debate about testing,” Bush teased, to laughter. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed it.”

“We should be willing to experiment,” he added. “We should always be looking to improve our thinking.”

Education has long been at the core of Bush’s policymaking, first as governor and then through his foundation, and he stressed again Thursday that he views the American education system as a “civil rights crisis” and “a national problem,” the successful reform of which could help fight poverty.

“If you can learn something, it is portable wealth, and no one can take it away from you,” Bush said. “But if we buy the excuses, if we let kids struggle, if we herd them into failing schools, how can we expect young people to grasp those first rungs of opportunity? That’s why fixing our failing schools should be one of our most urgent national priorities.”