AMES, Iowa — Gov. Chris Christie launched a full-throttled attack on leaders of teacher unions as he laid out his vision for reforming America's education system on Thursday.

The governor, speaking at Iowa State University, touted achievements in New Jersey on tenure reform and merit pay as models for the rest of the country. The speech also detailed proposals for keeping colleges more affordable and their leaders accountable for how they spend tuition dollars.

But in citing his accomplishments back at home, Christie reverted to blasting away at a familiar foe: Teacher unions. He declared the groups "put the comfort of adults ahead of the potential of our kids" and the "heroic educators who want to do what's right for their students."

Christie also criticized teachers unions in a speech to Latino leaders Wednesday in Washington D.C.

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In his effort to push for education reform, Christie described how he was met with resistance from New Jersey's teacher unions.

"The pessimists, led by the teachers' unions, declared that unless you have a PhD in education, you solutions are too simplistic," he said. "But it wasn't that reformers were ignoring the interests of teachers. It was teachers' unions who were ignoring their own members."

Christie touted expanded school choice in New Jersey and said he was successful at pushing unions out of the way.

"This is a program driven by a simple principle, I think parents are better suited to make decisions about their children's education than union leaders," he said.

But he also described the battles he's lost in New Jersey, specifically the fight to change the "last in, first out" rule to "quality-based layoffs" for teachers.

"If you're the teacher who joined the school most recently, even if you're the highest performing teacher, you'll still be the person to get laid off first. That makes no sense," he said. "But the power of the teachers' union has prevented us from instituting quality-based layoffs."

His national proposal for K-12 education included changes he's already made to New Jersey's public education system, including expanding charter schools overhauling tenure laws aimed at dismissing teachers who receive negative evaluations. He also pitched school choice for families living in failing school districts and implementing performance-based pay for teachers.

And just like he's pushed in New Jersey, Christie called for a "school voucher" program, which would give parents of students in failing school districts the opportunity to receive taxpayers funds to enroll their children in private or religious schools.

The speech capped off with an issue voters along the pre-campaign trail have frequently asked the governor to discuss: The skyrocketing cost of higher education.

"Now the affordability of higher education has been a big challenge for a long time. But since the economic downturn in 2008, this has become an ever-bigger issue, and one that's having a really severe impact on a lot of students and families," Christie said.

He blasted some colleges for being "drunk on cash and embarking on crazy spending binges just because they know they can get huge revenues from tuition."

He called on colleges to provide greater transparency on how they're spending their money so students know how their tuition dollars are spent. He criticized the college tuition bill as "the most opaque bill in the world."

"If we can break out those costs, we should also unbundle them -- allowing students, to just pay for the education and not all the add-ons," Christie said. "His is about empowering consumers. People will vote with their feet by deciding which colleges to attend, based on whether they're using money wisely."

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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewArco or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.