Fact check: Chris Christie "supported Common Core"?
February 4, 2016
By Cindy Kehler
In an ad dated January 4, 2016, Conservative Solutions PAC—which supports GOP presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)—stated that GOP presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie “supported Common Core.”[1][2] Rubio himself went even further in a GOP debate on January 14, 2016, stating of Christie that “we cannot afford to have a president of the United States that supports Common Core.”[3] Common Core refers to the controversial educational standards that the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers began developing in 2009.[4] Is it true that Christie formerly supported them or that he supports them now?
We found that Christie did support Common Core in his first few years as governor. However, in May 2015, Christie reversed his position on Common Core and announced his intention to revise New Jersey's educational standards.
Background and support of Common Core
Christie was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009 and was re-elected in 2013. The New Jersey State Board of Education adopted the Common Core standards in 2010, a few months after Christie took office.[5][6] Implementation was ongoing in 2011.[7] Christie stated in 2013, “We’re doing Common Core in New Jersey and we’re gonna continue.”[8] According to the website of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, New Jersey achieved “full implementation” of the Common Core standards in the 2013-2014 school year.[6]
Reversal
In July 2014, Governor Christie directed that a study commission look into and make “recommendations” regarding standardized testing and the Common Core standards.[9] Christie then reversed his stance on Common Core in May 2015, announcing that New Jersey would revise its state educational standards.[10] He said Common Core was “simply not working” and had brought “confusion and frustration to parents” and “distance between our teachers and the communities where they work.”[10] On June 7, 2015, Christie said on Face the Nation that he was changing his mind about Common Core not because he was running for president, but because he found that Common Core didn’t work. He said, “No, I'm changing because I gave it four years to work. I mean, unlike some other folks, who just reflexively dismissed it, I said, all right, let's give it a chance. Let's see if it will work. … But in four years, John, we did not have educators or parents buy into Common Core.”[11]
Revision of New Jersey’s standards
At Christie’s May 2015 direction, the New Jersey State Board of Education assembled a Standards Review Committee and subcommittees for revising New Jersey’s standards.[12] The committees finished their work in December 2015 and presented their proposed revisions to the Board in January 2016.[12][13]
Side-by-side comparisons of the revisions with the original Common Core standards in both mathematics and English language arts are available at the Board’s website.
The committee also recommended changing the name of the standards from the "New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards" and the "Common Core State Standards" to the “New Jersey Student Learning Standards.”[13]
In light of the presented revisions, in the GOP debate of January 14, 2016, Christie responded to Rubio’s statement that Christie “supports” Common Core by saying, “Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey.”[3] Does this mean that all of the Common Core standards were eliminated? Not necessarily. The New Jersey Star-Ledger counted 232 standards revised out of 1,427. Kimberly Harrington, chief academic officer of the New Jersey Department of Education, has stated, “We were not looking to develop a whole new set of standards, but rather to improve on what we had." New Jersey Commissioner of Education David Hespe analogized the revisions to altering the Constitution, saying, “You don’t change all the words. You come up with a really good change that might have a profound impact.”[14] The degree to which the newly revised standards differ from the previously implemented Common Core standards is beyond the scope of this article.
Conclusion
The ad is correct that Christie “supported” Common Core. But Christie’s words and actions in 2015 appear to refute Marco Rubio’s 2016 statement that Christie “supports” Common Core. By Christie’s own words, he supported the implementation of Common Core standards in New Jersey, and by his own words, he withdrew that support in 2015. He then directed the State Board of Education to revise the standards to be “higher and New Jersey-based.”[10] The Board’s Standards Review Committee and its subcommittees then revised some of the standards, presented the proposed revisions to the Board and recommended renaming the standards.
Launched in October 2015 and active through October 2018, Fact Check by Ballotpedia examined claims made by elected officials, political appointees, and political candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. We evaluated claims made by politicians of all backgrounds and affiliations, subjecting them to the same objective and neutral examination process. As of 2025, Ballotpedia staff periodically review these articles to revaluate and reaffirm our conclusions. Please email us with questions, comments, or concerns about these articles. To learn more about fact-checking, click here.
Sources and Notes
- ↑ Conservative Solutions PAC, "Favorite," January 4, 2016
- ↑ Conservative Solutions PAC, accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Republican Presidential Debate, January 14, 2016
- ↑ Common Core State Standards Initiative, "About the Standards," accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ State of New Jersey Department of Education, "Common Core State Standards," accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Common Core State Standards Initiative, "Standards in Your State," accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ State of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, "Christie Administration Takes Action to Implement Building Block of High Academic Standards in New Jersey Schools," September 13, 2011
- ↑ KIPP School Summit 2013, "New Jersey Governor Chris Christie," August 2013
- ↑ State of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, "Executive Order No. 159," July 14, 2014
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 NJ.com, "Christie on Common Core: It is simply not working," May 28, 2015
- ↑ Face the Nation, "June 7, 2015: Christie, de Blasio," June 7, 2015
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 State of New Jersey Department of Education, "Standards Revision Executive Summary," accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 State of New Jersey Department of Education, "New Jersey Standards Review Introduction," accessed February 3, 2016
- ↑ The Star-Ledger, "N.J. could keep nearly 85 percent of Common Core standards," January 11, 2016
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