Mitt Romney on Common Core

Mitt Romney made his position on the Common Core State Standards known last week at NBC’s “Education Nation” summit.

In response to Brian Williams’ question about what to make of the Common Core, Romney stated that it is not the federal governments place to be involved in educational standards.

I think it’s fine for people to lay out what they think core subjects might be and to suggest a pedagogy and being able to provide that learning to our kids. I don’t subscribe to the idea of the federal government trying to push a common core on various states.

It’s one thing to put it out as a model and let people adopt it as they will, but to financially reward states based upon accepting the federal government’s idea of a curriculum, I think, is a mistake. And the reason I say that is that there may be a time when the government has an agenda that it wants to promote.

And I’m not wild about the federal government having some kind of agenda that it then compensates states to teach their kids. I’d rather let education and what is taught state by state be determined state by state, not by the federal government.

In response to a New York City educator, Romney stated this about the responsibility of implementation.

I don’t happen to believe that every time that there’s a good idea that comes along the federal government should now finance the implementation of that. We certainly didn’t. States have responsibility for the education of their children, their respective borders. And I’m not looking for more federal spending. I mean, I know it is the nature of politics for someone in my position to promise more free stuff, to say we’re going to get more—we’ll send money, we’re going to do this, and people say, boy, he really cares about education. I really care about education.

I care so much about our kids that I don’t want to saddle them with trillions on trillions of dollars of debt when they come out of school. And so I’m just not willing to add more spending to get people happy with me. I’m willing to say, say look, education is done at the state level, the federal government provides funding for special needs students and low-income students. But in terms of implementing the common core, if you’ve chosen it, congratulations, work on it and do it within the resources of your own state.

There is much to applaud in Romney’s comments about the Common Core and its implementation. In a recent PDK/Gallup survey only 50% of Americans stated that they believe the Common Core State Standards will improve the quality of education. The Common Core State Standards is the latest over-promised, over-hyped “solution” to America’s educational woes. New, fancy, shiny standards do not fix bad instruction.

H/T Education Week