The common good? The debate over common core standards for K-12 education is heating up.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

As he contemplates the move to create common core standards across the country, Texas Representative Rob Eissler has advice for his fellow legislators in the other 49 states.

"I think Nancy Reagan said it best a while back," says Eissler, referring to the former first lady's "Just Say No," anti-drug campaign of the 1980s.

Eissler's position is a sort of line in the sand between those who see common standards as another intrusion by the federal government in state education plans and those who advocate for them as a way to lift the nation's achievement.

Although the idea of common standards at the state level has long been talked about by educators and policymakers, the movement received its most significant support last year. That was when the Common Core States Standards Initiative was announced, promoting the same set of standards for use in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.

The initiative won the backing of the National Governors Association as well as the Council of Chief State School Officers. Governors and chief state school officers from 48 states promised state-led efforts to develop core standards that will be based on research.

In addition, the initiative committed to align standards with college and work expectations, with an eye toward making education in America competitive internationally.

Hawaii Representative Roy Takumi points to the initiative's decision to adopt core standards for K-12 mathematics as a step toward that goal. "There is not a whole lot of variation, in my opinion, between algebra one students. Yet we pride ourselves to a fault that the Mississippi version of the standards embedded in algebra one are more than they might have in Minnesota. That would be a laughable argument in South Korea or Japan or Chile."

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A COMMON DEBATE

Those arguments don't hold water for Eissler and other opponents of the movement.

"You have to dig deep into what such standards are all about," says Eissler. "What are they going to emphasize? Will they fit your state? Will they fit the kids in your state? People may say that these kinds of standards should reflect the prevailing climate in our country, but what is that? And will that climate change after the next election?"

Until such questions are answered, Eissler recommends lawmakers across the country get their states to opt out of both the federal Race to the Top competition and the broader common core standards movement.

Eissler was delighted earlier this year when Texas Governor Rick Perry announced his state would not submit an application for education funding under the Race to the Top program, which requires states to adopt common standards to apply.

"If Washington were truly concerned about funding education with solutions that match local challenges," Perry said, "they would make the money available to the states with no strings attached."

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New York Senator Stephen Saland agrees. "That's the first argument so many of us have against common standards--Washington is using money as a form of coercion," he says, referring to the $4.3 billion given to the Race to the Top program last year through the federal stimulus bill.

"To do that sort of thing during a time when the states have been struggling to get through this recession is, to me, not fair," he says. "It's a little bit like holding out a steak for someone who is standing in a soup line. And in devastatingly difficult times, the lure of money coming from the feds can be very intoxicating."

But Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, the immediate past chairman of the National Governors Association, says common standards are...