Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation did a great job highlighting losses for Common Core advocates on Tuesday at National Review. Here’s a list:
- It appears that Common Core critic, Diane Douglas, will be elected as Arizona’s Superintendent for Public Instruction.
- Richard Woods, another Common Core critic, won as Georgia’s Superintendent of Education.
- Molly Spearman is expected to follow Governor Nikki Haley’s lead on Common Core as South Carolina’s State Superintendent of Education.
- Jillian Barlow, Wyoming’s Superintendent-elect, has promised a review of the Common Core.
Where Common Core was a primary issue, those who advocated for it lost.
Advocates are trying to spin this result by pointing to gubernatorial races.
While pro-Common Core superintendent candidates had a rough night, the national situation is more balanced after taking into account gubernatorial races, argues Karen Nussle of the Collaborative for Student Success, a group that defends the standards. Common Core was a central issue in four races, she said in a memo given to The Daily Caller News Foundation, and in three of them the pro-Common Core candidate came out ahead. In New York and Colorado, incumbent Democrats Andrew Cuomo and John Hickenlooper defeated Republican challengers who had targeted their support for Common Core. In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Democratic Core supporter Tom Wolf unseated Republican Tom Corbett, who reversed his past support of the standards in the run-up to the election and had pledged to seek a full repeal if re-elected. Only in Arizona, where Doug Ducey won an open-seat race against Fred Duval, did a Common Core opponent carry the day in a race where the standards were a significant issue, Nussle said.
Spin aside, it is abundantly clear that advocates in certain races lost because of their support. I highly doubt that advocates won because of their support. Gubernatorial races are complex and have a plethora of issues involved that impact the outcome of the race.