It starts here:

Last week I looked at some of the myths surrounding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a set of learning goals in language arts and math which seek to promote educational equity and excellence across America.

CCSS represents a collaborative response to the acknowledgement that American schools are not effectively preparing children for college and careers. According to this new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, 66 percent of America’s 4th graders are not proficient in reading and 66 percent of America’s 8th graders are not proficient in math. (In New Jersey the averages are, respectively, 58 percent and 51 percent; in Pennsylvania the averages are 60 percent and 58 percent.)

Noble aspirations aside, the CCSS have ignited an increasingly fractious debate. The National Governors Association, which led the initiative, was too timid to put it on this year’s annual agenda. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers once avidly supported CCSS but now appear on the brink of denouncing them. Forty-five states signed up to adopt the Common Core in 2010; nine have dropped out.

Read the rest here.