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On the heels of the results released yesterday from the first tests in New York aligned with Common Core Learning Standards (Common Core), over 40 business leaders signed an open letter urging policymakers to continue implementing Common Core in the Empire State.

Last week, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie addressed the KIPP School Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. He discussed a variety of education reform issues. Check out what he had to say about how Republican governors are leading the movement to raise academic standards.

The purpose is simple: to ground the work of our schools in an honest understanding of how our students are actually doing. For too long, we set the bar based not on academic standards but rather, it seemed, on political calculations.

Mr. Christie, speaking at a charter-school conference, said Republicans who opposed education issues such as the Common Core State Standards were having a “knee-jerk” reaction to something the president supports.

Twenty-five percent of the students right now in our country who earn a high school diploma, only 25% are ready for college course work. Every year families and taxpayers spend $3 billion dollars on remediation. Basically, we re-teaching high school level course work to college students and these standards are not going to solve every row in the public education system, but they put us—it’s one tool in the tool box that will get our students better prepared so that we’re not remediating, spending 3 billion dollars on remediation on kids who actually achieved a high school diploma.