Common Core Standards Facing Increased Opposition

The Common Core State Standards guidelines are being criticized by some lawmakers in Washington. The Republican National Committee passed a resolution criticizing the standards and calling them an “inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children,” while Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has launched an effort to eliminate federal funding for the common core.

Republicans have launched an attack on the Common Core State Standards, an initiative that more than 45 states and the District of Columbia signed onto but that has been facing increasing opposition in recent months from both right and left.

This new effort could undermine what has largely been bipartisan cooperation on the Core and is coming even as some states are already implementing the Common Core Standards in English Language Arts and math, and giving students high-stakes Core-aligned standardized tests.

Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, has just started a bid to to eliminate federal funding for the effort, which has come out of the Education Department budget. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has supported the standards, and gave $360 million to two multi-state consortia to develop standardized tests.

Grassley’s Wednesday letter to colleagues comes a few days after the Republican National Committee passed a resolution bashing the standards, calling them an “inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children” and saying that the RNC “rejects this CCSS plan.” The resolution says:

RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived “normal,” and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee rejects the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent and that it rejects the sharing of such personal data, without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent, with any person or entity other than schools or education agencies within the state, and be it finally

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