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Friday, June 7, 2013

Five People Wrote 'State-Led' Common Core | Heartlander Magazine

Five People Wrote 'State-Led' Common Core | Heartlander Magazine:

Five People Wrote 'State-Led' Common Core
June 7, 2013

JOY PULLMANN

Joy Pullmann (jpullmann@heartland.org) is a research fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing... (read full bio)
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Editor’s Note: This article is the second of three. Read the first here.
Many education leaders continue to insist the process for creating national education standards was “state-led,” referring to its incubation within two Washington DC-based nonprofits, the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers.
That seems to depend on how one defines “state-led.”
Former Virginia Gov. George Allen toldSchool Reform News NGA is less a policy forum and more a networking opportunity, because any resolutions governors vote on are “not binding” and governors often disagree. He attended NGA meetings particularly so he could recruit IBM into Virginia.
“I find regional governors associations were much more practical,” he said. “You have similar concerns and similar philosophy.”
Somehow that unelected, unrepresentative networking forum quickly became a serious driver of education policy changes for the nation by creating and promoting Common Core, a list of what kids