Gov. Jindal pulls Louisiana out of Common Core

BATON ROUGE, La., June 18 (UPI) -- A top Louisiana school official accused Gov. Bobby Jindal of playing politics Wednesday after the governor said he is pulling the state out of the Common Core.

Chas Roemer, chairman of the state board of elementary and secondary education, and John White, the state's schools superintendent, said Louisiana is committed to implementing the Common Core Standards. They said the governor does not have the authority to act unilaterally.

Roemer suggested that Jindal's change of heart on the Common Core has more to do with his presidential ambitions than with improving Louisiana's schools.

"I don't take any great satisfaction in saying this -- this is a political maneuver," Roemer said. "His politics are national in scope and focused on a very particular portion of the vote. There is no other way to explain a 180-degree turn from a plan that started in 2004."

Jindal announced earlier Wednesday that he was signing an executive order to remove Louisiana from the state consortium designing the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a test to be used for the Common Core Standards on reading and math. He charged that using the test would violate a Louisiana law requiring the state to select the low-bidding vendors.

The governor also suggested the Common Core is a federal takeover of education.

"We can have rigor. We can have high standards in Louisiana," he said. "We can do it without the federal overreach."

When President Obama embraced the Common Core, many conservatives who had previously supported the standards rejected them.