The Common Core curriculum will be history in Indiana, and Gov. Mike Pence said it is not a fit for his state because localities should have the final say in what is taught to schoolchildren.
"I've always believed that education is a state and local function," the Indiana Republican told "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. "We've got millions of Americans that have been rising up and being heard, including in Indiana, and saying, 'Look, we want to write our standards.'"
Common Core was developed as a way to provide consistent standards nationwide for educational curriculum in mathematics and English language arts. When it was first released in 2010, 44 states and the District of Columbia adopted the program.
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Response to Common Core has been mixed. Opponents argue that the curriculum promotes a one-size-fits-all approach to education, and proponents say the program offers standards that are higher than those already in place in the states.
Pence said he is glad Indiana was the first state to drop Common Core.
"I'm proud of the fact that Indiana was the first state in the Union to legally withdraw from Common Core and go through the process of writing our own standards," he said.
Pence said his primary objection to the curriculum was that standards written for the students in his state "were crafted somewhere other than Indiana." He said one of the strengths in this country was that states were "laboratories of innovation," which enabled each to "deal with [its own] unique populations and the unique challenges."
The ability to exert local control into the education of Indiana's students was paramount to their goals, Pence said.
"I wanted standards in Indiana to be written by Hoosiers for Hoosiers, and to be uncommonly high. And, we went through the process and accomplished that on our own," he said.
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