“Fight,” “spar,” “differ” and even “lock horns” are words being used in headlines to describe Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio’s Common Core discussion Thursday at the Republican presidential primary debate. When one looks back at the conversation, however, it’s not clear that the two were disagreeing, much less fighting.
Here’s how the Common Core discussion happened, so you can decide for yourself if it was a fight.
“I don’t believe the federal government should be involved in the creation of standards directly or indirectly, the creation of curriculum or content,” Bush said. “That is clearly a state responsibility.” Bush said he’s for higher standards combined with school choice and no social promotion. Social promotion is the practice of passing students on to the next grade even though they’re not academically prepared for it.
“I too believe in curriculum reform,” Rubio said. “It’s critically important in the 21st century. We do need curriculum reform, and it should happen at the state and local level.” Rubio explained that policies made at the state and local level are where parents can more easily influence those responsible for reforming policy. “Here’s the problem with Common Core: the Department of Education, like every federal agency, will never be satisfied. They will not stop with it being a suggestion, they will turn it into a mandate. … They will use Common Core or any other requirements that exist nationally to force it down the throats of our people and our states.”
“If states want to opt out of Common Core, fine. Just make sure your standards are high,” Bush replied. Bush added that lower expectations wouldn’t help Americans compete. It was unclear if Bush was suggesting that the federal government should mandate high standards, or just expressing his hope that states that opt out of Common Core would replace it with different high standards.
“Much of the casual commentary seems to have gotten this wrong,” Rick Hess, an education scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner of the debate headlines. “There’s no real disagreement when Bush and Rubio agree that they’re for high standards for children, Bush says the federal government shouldn’t be involved, and Rubio says curriculum reform is needed at the state and local level.”
While Bush and Rubio have very different records on Common Core, what they said at the debate did not reflect any obvious disagreement, Hess said. He suggested that the headlines may have been driven by commentators inclined to focus on Rubio’s criticism of President Obama’s record on Common Core or on Bush’s cordial relationship with the president’s record of support for the Common Core standards.
Still, there may have been disagreement beneath the surface.
“As with many things politicians say, it is not easy to point to something definitive showing they were disagreeing, but I think they were,” Neal McCluskey, an education scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Examiner. “Bush never said standards shouldn’t be pushed by Washington, even if he said the feds shouldn’t create them, and Rubio seemed to be replying that better curricula are needed, but giving the feds any influence – like they clearly had with Common Core – is a very slippery slope to de facto federal mandates. Basically, it seemed like Rubio was subtly calling Bush out for stealthily supporting federal influence over state standards, saying that allowing influence will lead to control.”
Whether it was a fight or not, the Republican primary campaigns continue. There are still 11 more debates where Bush and Rubio can fight over Common Core if they choose.
