AP: The chief criticism has been federal involvement in the initiative. If the federal government were to stop encouraging states to adopt Common Core and halt any coordination, communication or regulation on the issue, would that satisfy your concerns?
KINGSTON: I think it would. Georgia knows how to compete with neighboring states and does not need Washington bureaucrats to tell us how to run our schools. All states compete against each other right now for employers, and when a new business is coming to town, one of the questions they ask, is what kind of school systems do you have. For example, Douglasville just got the Keurig coffee company, 500 jobs. Keurig is not going to move a factory there unless they know that their employees will have access to good school systems. And if they can’t find it in the state of Georgia, they are going to go to South Carolina, Alabama, California, or wherever. I think there is a real competitive market mechanism that keeps this in check.
PERDUE: Common Core is not going to solve the education problem in this country. No Child Left Behind didn’t. Race to the Top didn’t. Common Core will not. … Common Core, at its best, is now a distraction from a debate around what the real issues are, and that is how do we get our kids to read by fourth grade, how do we get them to stay in school, how do we get them to be proficient in math and science and to be meaningful players in the economy when they get out.
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