Photo Illustration by John C. Osborn/EdSource

Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush-league.

Photo Analogy by John C. Osborn/EdSource

Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush-league.

With the growing certainty that Jeb Bush volition be a candidate in the 2022 presidential entrada, his support for the Mutual Core State Standards guarantees that the standards existence implemented in 43 states will be drawn into the whirlpool of presidential politics.

Information technology is uncertain, notwithstanding, what impact that will accept on the time to come of the standards, one of the about significant education reforms in decades. What is at stake is whether the Common Core becomes the transformative national reform its proponents are hoping information technology will be – or whether it becomes a polarizing issue on the education mural with diminishing public support.

1 gloomy scenario envisions the Mutual Cadre lurching toward a possible terminal fate, at least in states where at that place is rise opposition. UC Berkeley public policy professor David Kirp, a longtime education scholar, wrote in a contempo New York Times op-ed slice titled "Rage against the Common Cadre" that "in states where the opposition is passionate and powerful, it will accept a herculean effort to get the standards back on track."

Some other scenario, however, is that despite rising opposition in some states the Common Core volition stop upwards existence implemented in most parts of the country – perhaps not in exactly the same form everywhere, but nonetheless marking a dramatic shift from the patchwork of didactics standards in place for near of this nation'south history.

That is the view of Marshall Smith, former undersecretary of pedagogy during the Clinton administration and counselor to current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. He predicted that at least 35 states "will either be clear Mutual Core or have a modification that is at about a get-go cousin or a brother of the standards."

The Common Core does not appear to be in any danger in California, domicile to one in 8 of all public schoolchildren in the Us. Conditions for implementation of the standards in the state remain favorable, as noted in an earlier EdSource Today report. Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown and the Legislature are still supportive. Significantly, the teachers unions are besides. Chances are the land volition be able to weather the storms of presidential politics on the issue.

"I haven't seen potent resistance that has caused us to shift form, or withdraw from the Common Core," said Michael Kirst, president of the California State Board of Didactics and Stanford professor emeritus, who has been a longtime scholar of the politics of didactics in California and nationally.

Even in states that accept withdrawn from the Common Core, or are threatening to practise so, most are introducing some version of the standards in their identify.

"There are very few states which are going back to their old standards," Kirst said. "All only a scattering are going frontwards with some form of new standard closely aligned with the Common Core."

According to a written report by the Education Commission of united states final autumn, in the 45 states that adopted the standards since 2010, 43 "continue with the Common Core standards in place." The study, notwithstanding, noted that "that number could refuse" as at least v states are considering repealing the standards, but that "the vast majority of states adopting the Common Core continue to support the endeavor."

In fact, said Kirst, "the standards are holding up better than I thought."

He pointed out that some states have renamed their standards just they are are still substantially Common Core standards. Florida's Adjacent Generation Sunshine Standards is one example. Removing the Common Cadre name may actually reduce the intensity of the opposition to the standards, Kirst said.

So far, opposition to the Common Cadre has had the nigh significant fallout not on the standards themselves, but on the assessments that students will to take to measure how well they and the schools they attend are doing.

When the Common Core standards were first adopted, the vision was that most states would adopt ane of ii sets of assessments: those developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium or those adult by the Partnership for Cess of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.

That vision has been significantly eroded, every bit a contempo review past the Education Committee of usa titled "fifty Ways to Test" found. After Mississippi withdrew from the PARCC assessments last calendar month, only 11 states and Washington, D.C., are expected to administer the PARCC assessments in the spring. That's a steep drop from the 28 states that joined the consortium in 2010.

Students in 18 states, including California, will take the Smarter Balanced assessments. Some 20 states either never joined or take left the consortia birthday, and will administer other assessments, including some states that are developing their own.

"The idea that we would have 45 states take two assessments, and both highly similar, that is probably non going to happen given the nature of federalism and the multifariousness of state political cultures," Kirst said.

Having a less uniform implementation of the standards may really be more than consistent with the original conception of the Common Cadre – a voluntary ready of education standards that would be driven by states rather than a uniform set of top-down standards imposed past the federal authorities.

At this early stage of the campaign, it is clear that Bush's support for the standards won't mute opposition to them within his party.

That was evident at the Freedom Summit concluding calendar month in Des Moines, Iowa, attended by the most conservative wing of the Republican Party. Common Core bashing was a running theme throughout the daylong upshot attended by staunch opponents, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Wisconsin'south Gov. Scott Walker, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee is the latest in a string of current and former governors who one time supported and at present oppose the Mutual Core. Huckabee said the Common Core "has morphed into a frankenstandard that nobody, including me, can support."

But were Bush to sally as the nominee of his party, onetime undersecretary Smith said he doubted that the GOP grassroots would make his support for the Common Core a major issue in the general election.

"It may exist a wedge result in some states," Smith said. "But Jeb totally confuses the consequence for Republicans (because of his back up for the Common Cadre). They can't beget to embarrass him to strength him to back downwardly from this."

If Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, that would further help ensure that the Common Cadre would not go a major issue in the entrada. Clinton has been largely silent on the Common Core, unlike her married man, who has endorsed the standards.

And then far, at least, she has made early education her major education priority. She has go a leader in a entrada launched effectually the slogan, "Likewise Pocket-sized to Fail," which focuses on the 0-5 years, and places a major priority on access to high-quality preschool.

The greatest threat to the Common Core may not be at the national level, but at the school and district level, where teachers may struggle to implement the standards, parents try to understand them and students adapt to a whole new prepare of tests and assessments.

Opposition could be stirred when the results of the first total administration of the Smarter Counterbalanced and PARCC assessments to exist taken past all 3rd- through eighth-graders and 11th-graders are released. Equally was the case in New York, those scores are widely expected to be lower than those students earned on previous tests.

"The biggest political backlash won't be from political folks arguing amongst themselves, merely from parents and teachers when they find out that implementation of the standards is very challenging," Smith said.

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