The more I study this thing, the more appalled I am. The fact that it’s in disarray at the moment is a great blessing. I hope people can get their bearings and realize that letting a bunch of left-wing extremists, or any kind of extremists, take over your school system is a big mistake.

 I don’t think people appreciate how similar (or parallel) Common Core is to ObamaCare, i.e., a massive federal intrusion with a rule for everything. And once they got those rules built into law, you could never go back. Just as Obama changed the law 30 times to keep his ObamaCare in play, the bureaucrats at the DOE would change the rules hundreds of times as they found out how far they could go. Finally you would have a wasteland that would be declared a wonderful success. (That’s what the International Reading Association told us about Whole Word and Whole Language for 50 years.)

 Anyway, I wrote a piece called “Common Core fulfills an ugly dream" which takes a long historical view.

http://www.examiner.com/article/common-core-fulfills-an-ugly-dream?...

 Summing up: some people think they know some good things about Common Core but I suspect those things are mostly an illusion. Some people think they know some bad things about Common Core  but I suspect those things, in truth, are far worse than these people imagine.

I keep hearing people talk about how isn't it better to have "higher standards"? Well, how about we set standards for next year that all children will be tall, well-behaved, healthy, and have rational thoughts. Okay, that settles it.  Done deal. I think it's  somewhat like fantasy football. Everybody pretends; and then they pretend that the pretending is a good thing. (Batteries, and reality, not included.)