Proponents of national standards, as I’ve pointed out
many times, have made a concerted effort to avoid attention as they’ve insidiously—and successfully—pushed the so-called Common Core on states. They’ve insisted the effort is “state led,” even though states didn’t create the standards and Washington coerced adoption through Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind waivers. They’ve called adoption “voluntary,” even with the heavy hand of the Feds behind them. And they’ve assiduously avoided what blew up past efforts to impose national standards: concrete content such as required readings or history lessons that were guaranteed to
make people angry.
Well, with a recent unveiling of sample items for federally funded tests that go with the standards,
Neal McClusky asks this over at Cato @ Liberty: