Most of the arguments I have heard against the Common Core State Standards strike me as hardly worth responding to, but I came across a piece on the subject the other day by Yong Zhao that is rather thoughtful.  Zhao is presidential chair and associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon's College of Education, where he also serves as director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education.  He grew up in China.  When my organization organized a research trip to China to try to understand its rapidly changing education system, we engaged Zhao as our guide.  In the course of that trip, I came to respect Zhao and his views.  His piece appeared in Valerie Strauss' The Answer Sheet on washingtonpost.com.

In his piece, Zhao argues, as I and many others have, that labor markets are increasingly global, so that people at any given skill level are competing with others, all over the globe, with similar skills.  The result, is that those with a given set of skills who are willing to work for less than others with the same set of skills will typically be hired to do it, leaving those charging more without work.  And he then asks, how then can workers in high wage countries compete without substantially lowering their wages, and therefore their standard of living?