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Chris Christie's flip on Common Core signals hardening of GOP base
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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became the latest GOP presidential contender to flip on Common Core, announcing last week his opposition to the curriculum and standards system once embraced across a broad political spectrum. - photo by Eric Schulzke
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie became the latest GOP presidential contender to flip on Common Core, announcing last week his opposition to the curriculum and standards system once embraced across a broad political spectrum.

In flipping on Common Core, Christie joins Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who moved from support to staunch and vocal opposition as he prepared to run for the presidency. Jindal has made good on his reversal by leading a dogged effort in the courts and bureaucracy to peel the state away from the system.

"This legislation will help us get Common Core out of Louisiana once and for all. We will not accept this one-sized-fits-all approach to our childrens education," Jindal said in a statement in March, U.S. News reported.

The reversal has been something of a "slow motion flip," as the Washington Post puts it, noting that last year he established a commission to review backlash to the Common Core. I have some real concerns about Common Core and how its being rolled out and thats why I put a commission together to study it, he said in November, the Post reported.

ABC notes that less than two years ago, Christie was all in on Common Core, in part because he wanted a piece of federal funds under the Race to the Top Program, which required states to adopt Common Core or something very much like it.

"We're doing Common Core in New Jersey and we're going to continue. And this is one of those areas where I've agreed more with the president than not," Christie told the audience at a school summit in Las Vegas on August 2013, according to video footage of the event.

But last Thursday he changed his tune. "We must reject federal control of our education and return it to parents and teachers," Christie said. "We need to take it out of the cubicles of Washington, D.C., where it was placed by the Obama administration, and return it to the neighborhoods of New Jersey."

At U.S. News & World Report, Andrew Rotherham notes that opposition to the Common Core seems largely focused on the name, not the substance. States that have adopted nearly identical curriculum, some using the same tests, have seen much less controversy.

"Students in Virginia, for instance, are doing Common Core-like math," Rotherham writes. "It's just not called that and the reaction is, well, crickets. Alaska's standards were similar enough for the state to participate in one of the two state Common Core testing consortia, and there is a little debate there, but nothing like what we're seeing in Common Core states. After Indiana pulled out of the Common Core to review its standards, the state ended up basically adopting Common Core under a different name. It defused the issue."