Dear Friends:

So much attention has been focused on the Common Core and its implications for states and school districts across the nation. Allies support rigorous standards to better prepare students for college and career, while opponents view the Common Core as a Federal intrusion on states' rights. At this juncture, despite these opposing viewpoints, what is most important is identifying what is needed to support front-line educators and ensure high quality implementation.

This issue is considered by Joan McRobbie, CTAC Senior Associate for National School Reform, in a Huffington Post guest blog.

Embraced today by 44 states and the District of Columbia, the Common Core State Standards are now facing a spasm of pushback. Factions in several states are using familiar polarizing rhetoric to frame the Common Core as a federal intrusion on states' rights. But more worrisome to Common Core supporters has been the uproar in New York, a pro-Common Core state fully expected to be an implementation leader. Discontent among front-line New York educators has elbowed its way into the headlines, rattling the long-solid backing of the big unions and upending the policy conversation in Albany and other state capitols.

Read the full guest blog from The Huffington Post