Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry appeared at the New England Council’s “Politics and Eggs” event in New Hampshire on March 12th. During the Q&A, Perry was asked about education policy:

I’m pretty simple about the K-12 as a potential candidate for the United States. That needs to be left up to the States. I don’t think there is much of a role at all for the federal government. I think your governor, your legislature working with your school administrators, your teachers, and your parents—substantially better place for curriculum to be developed, then a one-size-fits-all out of Washington DC. If the Department of Education needs to be a repository of good practices, that might be a good final state for it. But I don’t think that Washington needs to be this one-size-fits-all, this place where our healthcare, where our transportation infrastructure, where education reform needs to come from.

Louis Brandeis, who is not exactly a well-known conservative, former member of the US Supreme Court, said that the states were laboratories of democracy. That states needed to experiment and try different ideas out there. From time to time, they’re going to foul up. I will suggest to you, from my perspective, Colorado is making an error in legalizing marijuana, but it’s exactly what Louis Brandeis said. I don’t agree with it, but I respect their right to find out they’re making a mistake.  And the same is true about education policy. I just think that people closer to the schools, closer to your state, closer to understanding what the people of New Hampshire are all about: you’ll come up with the best curriculum, you’ll find the ways to educate your children substantially better than this one-size-fits-all that all too often comes out of Washington DC.

You can view the full video below. Perry discusses education at around the 34:30 minute mark: