Hillary Clinton: You know, what I think about the really unfortunate argument that has been going on around Common Core, it’s very painful because the Common Core started off as a bipartisan effort. It was actually nonpartisan. It wasn’t politicized. It was to try to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country, no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, that there wouldn’t be two tiers of education. Everybody would be looking at what would be learned doing their best to achieve that

I think part of the reason Iowa may be more understanding of this is you have had the Iowa core for years. The U.S. had a system plus the Iowa Assessment Test. I think I’m right in saying that I took those when I was in elementary school. The Iowa tests. So that Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time. You see the value of it. You understand why that helps you organize your whole education system.

And a lot of states, unfortunately, haven’t had that. They do not understand the value of a core in the sense, a Common Core, yes, of course, you can figure out the best way in your community to try to reach — but your question is a larger one. How do we end up at a point where we are so negative about the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation which is how our kids are educated?