THE
CORE
federal government. Shortly after
Obama’s inauguration, the new
president launched the Race to
the Top competition, which let
recession-addled states vie for
billions in extra stimulus funding
in exchange for agreeing to certain
education reforms. Early drafts
of Race to the Top guidelines required states to agree to implement the Common Core standards
if they wanted to get the money.
But even at the time, Linn knew
that heavy-handed federal involvement in a primarily state-led
project could be the Core’s political undoing: He anticipated rightwing critics would point to Race to
the Top and allege states had only
signed onto the Core in exchange
for funding, handily connecting
that sequence of events to a tea
party narrative about a socialist
and micromanaging government.
So NGA and CCSSO representatives lobbied the Education Department several times to get the
Common Core standards adoption
requirement cut from Race to the
Top guidelines. The feds didn’t exactly back off, but they did remove
the term “Common Core” from
the guidelines, requiring instead
that states adopt “college- and
career-ready standards.” The ad-
HUFFINGTON
02.02.14
ministration also allocated $350
million in stimulus cash to fund
the development of tests aligned
to the Common Core.
As expected, even the lightened
federal fingerprint would c