Common Core Standards for schools in 45 states stir social conservatives' reaction in some

With the adoption of the Common Core Standards for education in most states, there is growing concern about local officials' losing control over what they teach. As a result, "State education leaders are moving to calm political tempests by adopting or reaffirming policies aimed at asserting local control over data, curriculum and materials. But the classroom-level impact of those moves could be negligible as states forge ahead on common-core implementation, Andrew Ujifusa reports for Education Week. Only five states—Texas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Alaska and Virginia—have not adopted the standards.

"On the one hand, officials' actions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Michigan highlight anxieties over the privacy of information about individual students and what some see as state and federal intrusion into classrooms," Ujifusa writes. "At the same time, the specific steps, all in states run by Republicans, largely emphasize existing policy or practice."

The state school board in Louisiana "clarified that school districts maintain control over classroom content and cannot have course materials forced on them," Ujifusa writes. Alabama "adopted a policy that no data that can be traced to individual students is to be shared with the federal government," and Florida "refused to adopt appendices accompanying the common core that include suggested specific fiction and non-fiction selections. Some of the suggested literature has come under fire from conservative activists for how they portray radical politics and sexuality." In Michigan, they passed a resolution that "reaffirmed the power of districts, while shielding the board from political meddling in academic-content standards." (Read more)