Jindal, a likely 2016 contender, once backed the standards. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Jindal moves against Common Core

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued executive orders Wednesday to withdraw the state from the Common Core standards and federally subsidized standardized tests, defying his state legislature, his superintendent of education and the business community — but endearing himself to tea party activists across the country who could be influential in early primary states if he chooses to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

“We want out of Common Core,” Jindal said at a press conference. “We’re very alarmed about choice and local control of curriculum being taken away from our parents and educators. It is never too late to make the right decision.”


But Jindal’s move immediately got tangled up in state politics — and the nitty-gritty of state procurement law.

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Within an hour of Jindal’s announcement, state Superintendent John White was telling reporters that the governor had no authority to back out of the Common Core or scrap the exam the state was planning to use, which was developed by a federally subsidized consortium known as PARCC.

“The state will continue to implement the Common Core and continue to implement the PARCC tests — the governor’s comments notwithstanding,” White said.

A few hours after that, the state commissioner of administration held her own news conference to say that White had exceeded his authority. Not only that: She was suspending the contract that the state education department had planned to use to purchase and administer PARCC test questions. The commissioner, Kristy Nichols — a former deputy chief of staff to Jindal — said the way White had structured the testing deal may have violated the state’s contracting laws.

The roller coaster left Common Core foes not sure whether to celebrate or start drawing up new battle plans to help the governor get his way.

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“We will remain watchful as to how all of this will continue to unfold,” said Debbie Sachs, an anti-Common Core activist in the state.

Jindal was once a marquee supporter of the Common Core standards, which lay out the math and language arts concepts children should learn in every grade from kindergarten through high school. The governor helped bring the standards to Louisiana in 2010. As recently as this spring, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation included a quote from Jindal — praising the Common Core as a way to “raise expectations for every child” — in a promotional video for the standards.

But as opposition to the Common Core mounted on both left and right in the past year — with especially strong push back from the tea party — Jindal changed his tune.

A likely presidential candidate in 2016, Jindal has seized on the standards as an example of federal meddling in state affairs. The Obama administration didn’t write the standards, but it pushed states hard to adopt them and spent $360 million subsidizing the development of new assessments.

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Just this week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan publicly took Jindal to task for flip-flopping on the standards, saying the governor’s new stance had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with education.

Jindal’s response: “We will not be bullied by the federal government.”

Other Republican governors have made similar assessments of the Common Core. In late March, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation that made the state the first to repeal the standards, in favor of a home-grown version that ended up mirroring the Common Core in many respects.

Oklahoma was next: Just five months after she gave a feisty speech supporting the standards, calling them crucial to American growth, Gov. Mary Fallin signed a bill repealing them.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley also signed a bill last month revoking the standards, though new ones won’t be in place until 2015. Like her counterparts, Haley said she saw the Common Core as a tool of federal control. South Carolinians, she said, needed to set their own standards for educating their children, not just to march them through a curriculum in lock-step with students in California.

Two other states also have passed measures to undo the Common Core. In North Carolina, legislators are trying to reconcile bills passed by the House and Senate. In Missouri, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has until July 14 to decide whether to sign a bill abolishing the standards that was passed by the Republican-dominated legislature.

The backlash has been fueled, in part, by tea party activist groups such as FreedomWorks, which has the organizational muscle to generate thousands of protest letters and petition signatures; by conservative think tanks such as the American Principles Project; and by right-wing radio hosts such as Glenn Beck, who is holding an interactive program in movie theaters nationwide next month to organize what he promises will be an all-out war to overturn the Common Core. He will be joined by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and evangelical historian David Barton.

Opponents across the political spectrum have mostly focused on the federal government’s role in promoting the standards, but they have also raised a laundry list of other objections: Some call the standards too easy; others say they’re too tough; some fear they will usher in too much standardized testing; others worry that they have not been adequately tested or rigorously reviewed by teachers who deal with children of all backgrounds, including special-needs students and those still learning English.

Supporters say the standards are meant to nurture critical thinking and problem solving at every grade and to help students develop real-world skills that will help prepare them for college and careers.

While most of the 45 states that initially joined the Common Core have stuck with the standards, about a dozen have pulled out of the consortia that were set up to develop common exams, to be given to students nationwide so that — for the first time — a third grader in Mississippi could be measured by the same yardstick as a third-grader in Massachusetts or in Michigan.

That goal increasingly appears elusive. Even states that have chosen to stick with the common exams are taking different approaches; some are setting their own pass scores or phasing in higher expectations for their students more slowly than originally planned. Some are considering using different exams for high school students.

In Louisiana, Jindal has used his anger at the Common Core to reignite a long-running feud with the Obama Administration.

The Justice Department last year sought first to block, then to exercise control over, a voucher program in Louisiana that uses public funds to help parents pay tuition at private and religious schools. Jindal made political hay out of that fight for months, accusing the president of crushing the hopes and dreams of minority children from low-income families who only sought a better education. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other Republicans picked up the battle cry.

The voucher fight ended in a bit of a draw, with both sides declaring victory. A federal judge ruled the state must provide the DOJ with demographic information about voucher applicants — but the government will have just 10 days to review the information before the vouchers are handed out, not the 45 days the DOJ had requested.

Just as that dispute settled down, Jindal revived his feud with the administration over Common Core.

“We need Louisiana standards for Louisiana children,” Jindal said. “That doesn’t mean we aren’t for rigor in Louisiana schools.”

The governor’s move could set off a political crisis in Louisiana. Dozens of the state’s most powerful business leaders have pleaded with Jindal not to withdraw from the Common Core.

As for PARCC, the memorandum of understanding committing Louisiana to the consortium was signed three years ago by the state superintendent, the governor and the president of the state board of education. The document clearly states that the current officeholders in all of those three posts must sign off on any move to withdraw.

And White, for one, has said he has no intention of signing. The president of the state board of education, Chas Roemer, also pledged on Wednesday to stick with Common Core. Roemer is up for reelection in 2015. A fierce opponent of Common Core, blogger Jason France, has already said he plan to run for the seat. The state board of education has the power to appoint — or to fire — the superintendent of education.

In an interview last week, White said he was “absolutely confident” the state would still be teaching the Common Core and using Common Core exams this time next year. “There are obviously a lot of different opinions in the state,” he said, “but we have a four-year plan and we’re going to see it through.”

Jindal, however, said Wednesday that state law does not allow Louisiana to sign up for a test like PARCC without a competitive bidding process. Therefore, he said, the state must pull out of PARCC and start the process of looking for standardized tests from scratch.

“Today’s action gets us out of the Common Core, but it’s not the ultimate solution,” he said.

The move infuriated supporters of the Common Core. Mike Cohen, president of Achieve, a nonprofit that helped write the standards, accused Jindal of “playing politics with children’s futures.”

Supporters of the Common Core have made clear that they still consider it a great success to have 40 or so states sharing common expectations for students, even if they’re not using the same exams — and even if some states have very publicly backed out. But they have acknowledged that the transition to the new standards has been more than a little bumpy.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the largest teachers union, the National Education Association, famously called the rollout of the standards “botched.”

And just last week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent about $200 million to develop and promote the standards, said no student or teacher should be penalized because of low scores on the new Common Core tests during a two-year transition period.

The administration, however, has stood firm in support of the Common Core. In a recent appearance on “CBS This Morning,” Duncan said he understood change was difficult but argued that “having high standards is absolutely critical.”

Asked specifically about Jindal, Duncan appeared frustrated.

“Gov. Jindal was a passionate supporter before he was against it,” he said. “In that situation it was about politics. It’s not about education. That’s part of the problem.”