What If the Common Core Standards Are a Huge Mistake?

The law specifically prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from interfering or directing curriculum or instruction.* There must be a hole in that law big enough to drive a truck through, and drive the Obama administration did.

As we all know, the Obama administration used the $5 billion in Race to the Top funding, and its power (contested) to issue waivers, to push, prod, and bribe states into “voluntarily” abandoning their own standards and adopting the untried Common Core standards. Some states dropped weak standards, some dropped better standards that had proved their worth.

Secretary Duncan says these standards will make everyone “college and career ready.” The nation’s major corporations agree. So do the nation’s two big teachers’ unions.

But how do they know what the effect of the Common Core standards will be?

We know that they cause a dramatic decline in test scores. Their boosters say that is…