Common Core Dissolving

MAINE’S GOV. PAUL LEPAGE: ‘I NO LONGER SUPPORT THE COMMON CORE’ STANDARDS

Posted on November 11, 2014 Written by Breitbart.com

Incum­bent Maine Gov. Paul LeP­age ® told WABI TV5 that he is fear­ful what has hap­pened in Massachusetts—slipping from the nation’s top edu­ca­tion spot to sev­enth place—as a result of the Com­mon Core stan­dards, will also hap­pen in Maine.

“First of all, there is always a bet­ter way,” LeP­age said. “And I no longer sup­port Com­mon Core, and I say that because we have been in Com­mon Core for sev­eral years here in Maine.”

“But after see­ing what has hap­pened to Massachusetts—they were the num­ber one edu­ca­tion sys­tem in Amer­ica prior to adopt­ing Com­mon Core,” he con­tin­ued. “That tells me that we need to take a hard look, maybe it would be bet­ter going back to what they had before.”

LeP­age said he is con­tin­u­ing to eval­u­ate the Com­mon Core but would like for his state to have the highest-ranked edu­ca­tion sys­tem in the country.

“We already have a great work ethic, why not improve on it,” he explained. “And so, I see the more we chal­lenge our chil­dren here in Maine, the tougher stan­dards that we have, the bet­ter they will perform.”

Inde­pen­dent can­di­date Eliot Cut­ler whole­heart­edly [sup­ported] the Com­mon Core stan­dards. Tak­ing the posi­tion that time and effort have already been expended on the new stan­dards, Cut­ler said, “I think the Com­mon Core is a good way of doing that. Let’s just pay atten­tion, do it, eval­u­ate it in five, six, eight years, see how we are doing. But let’s not try to rein­vent the wheel all over again.”

“This is not some kind of com­mu­nist plot to take over America’s schools,” Cut­ler con­tin­ued. “This is really a pro­fes­sion­ally devel­oped effort to make sure our kids get educated.”

Demo­c­rat guber­na­to­r­ial can­di­date Mike Michaud took the mid­dle road, assert­ing that account­abil­ity was needed in education.

“I think that we need to have some stan­dards, but we got to allow the flex­i­bil­ity at the munic­i­pal level.”

As Bre­it­bart News reported in July, dur­ing the sum­mer meet­ings of the National Gov­er­nors Association—one of the own­ers of the copy­right to the Com­mon Core standards—many gov­er­nors pre­ferred not to speak about the con­tro­ver­sial edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tive, refer­ring to it, instead, as polit­i­cally “radioac­tive,” “divi­sive,” and “toxic.”

Related Posts

• Two More Gov­er­nors Turn­ing Against Com­mon Core
• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jin­dal sues fed­eral gov­ern­ment over Com­mon Core
• Teach­ers rep­ri­manded for speak­ing out against Com­mon Core
  Source:http://agenda21news.com/2014/11/maines-gov-paul-lepage-longer-support-common-core-standards/#more-3677