Marco Rubio Quotes

The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA - there is no role at the federal level for the Department of Education.

Classrooms cannot and should not be coerced into adopting federal academic standards. That's not just my belief; it's federal law.

The Obama administration has abused the executive power, enforcing Common Core on the states. It has used race to the top fans to effectively blackmail and force the states to adapt Common Core. But in one silver lining of Obama abusing executive power is that everything done with executive power can be undone with executive power and I intend to do that.

States are free to modify the Common Core State Standards or adopt their own individual standards, because academic standards are the prerogative of the states.

I would abolish the federal Department of Education and very quickly. People don't realize that the federal Department of Education gives each state 11 cents out of every school dollar that every state spends. But it comes with 15 cents worth of strings attached.

Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., shouldn't know how to better educate my kids than I do.

When governors such as John Engler, Mike Huckabee, and Mike Pence were driving the conversation on voluntary high standards driven by local voices, it all made sense.

I think we'll have a bigger conversation first within the Republican Party, then with the American people about what's the proper role of the federal government, i do hope that Common Core will be one more, one more reason for us to have this bigger debate, this bigger conversation about the proper role of the federal government in local education.

You have got to have two things in education reform. You have got to have some flexibility, so people can figure out what to do. But you also have to have accountable, basically what the Common Core standards were, some sort of set of national standards, so we can measure.

I'm not cutting services. But I'm cutting spending. But I may cut Department of Education. I believe common core is a very bad thing. I believe that we should be lo - you know, educating our children from Iowa, from New Hampshire, from South Carolina, from California, from New York. I think that it should be local education.

We don't need unelected federal agency bureaucrats in Washington telling our states what they can and can't do with respect to protecting their limited taxpayer dollars in private enterprises.

The Common Core State Standards are more rigorous standards than the great majority of states had in place previously.

I resent Washington telling states, or the residents of those states, what to do and what to think.

If I was a state, I would like to see education left to the schools themselves, but I don't want the federal government involved in education. I think that it ends up setting standards that cost you time and money and don't make any difference in education. I want to stop that.

The demand that school finances be transferred away from local school districts to the state and/or federal government has been a long-time favorite of the educationist lobbies.

The federal government has a very limited role in the schools…It’s the ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’ principle. The federal government only pays 8 percent of the school costs. The state and local government, 92 percent… Our federal role in education has been the needs of the neediest students.

Keep the Federal skunk out of our schools.

There is a tension between the flexibility we give states and the accountability we require from states.

I think that there should be national standards in reading and math and maybe history and civics….We have a culture of non-compliance with Federal requirements in education.

Congress really likes the power that comes from the Highway program or messing in education.

When the federal government imposes a mandate on the states or supersedes a state policy, conservatives often rise in protest.

In my eight years as governor, I did everything I could to resist federal control of issues that belong to the states.

I don't want Washington - let me be perfectly clear - I do not want Washington involved in local education decisions any more than I want them involved in common core. You know, common core was a state-created and state-implemented voluntary set of standards in Math and English that are comparable across state lines.

While some of the critics are voicing legitimate concerns about the merits of a system of academic benchmarks, Common Core is frequently a straw man for the frustrations conservatives have with the federal government.

We should roll back Common Core.