Dive Brief:
- While he has been threatening to extricate Louisiana from its commitment to the Common Core for some time, Gov. Bobby Jindal further detailed his goal Wednesday.
- The state's Legislature, school board, and superintendent, John White, all want to keep the national standards, making Jindal's target somewhat difficult.
- Jindal acknowledged this difficulty as he urged other leaders to get behind his plan and help him create "Louisiana standards and a Louisiana test," an announcement that came alongside an executive order mandating a competitive bidding process for the state's testing contract with PARCC.
Dive Insight:
While Jindal can probably stop the state from taking a Common Core-aligned assessment next spring, he would be unable to opt the state out of the standards without the approval of the legislature and school board.
Knowing this, Jindal has been dividing his remarks between the Common Core and the PARCC assessment. According to him, Louisiana did not comply with the law when it contracted PARCC, since it did not have a competitive bidding process and the state is technically supposed to pick the assessment maker with the cheapest proposal.
"PARCC is, at least anecdotally, more expensive than many of the other tests offered out there," said Jindal.
