Cbs News

This is a breaking story about which I'll have more to say in a column next week, but today the National Governors' Association announced that 46 states and the District of Columbia have joined a coalition in favor of common academic standards. Only South Carolina, Alaska, Missouri, and Texas have held back. From the NGA press release:

By signing on to the common core state standards initiative, governors and state commissioners of education across the country are committing to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. These standards will be research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills.

The caveat here is that once the coalition develops the standards, each state will be able to choose whether or not it will actually adhere to them. Unless the federal government provides some sticks and carrots, there will be little incentive for politicians from low-performing states, like Mississippi, to enact the standards. After all, doing so would reveal just how little those states' school children are actually learning, and to what a pitifully low standard they've been held.

But this is still big news. It wasn't that long ago that proponents of common standards believed the best they could hope for were regional standards. In other words, instead of our current system of 50 different state curricula, groups of states would band together and agree to share one system. But in recent months, the political calculus has shifted considerably, with national standards emerging as education reform common ground between teachers' unions and some of their opponents within the Democratic coalition -- those who broadly support teacher merit pay, an expansion of charter schools and vouchers, and alternative-certification programs for teachers. All of these folks can agree, seemingly, that the system would benefit from some regularization.

Of course, anti-testing advocates are likely to be quite skeptical of this move, which has the potential to lead to national assessments. At this early stage, though, it is totally unclear whether common assessments would even be an outgrowth of common standards.

--Dana Goldstein

A reader writes:

My wife and I are/were staunch choice advocates; we'd both done our

share of marching on Washington for the cause. Actually enduring the

process gave us a much more nuanced opinion about abortion.

For us, it was Trisomy 21 -- Down Syndrome. The test came after my

wife awoke one night in a pool of blood screaming and thinking she'd

suffered a miscarriage. After she ran to the toilet, it fell upon me

to call her doctor and then scoop out the remains--that actually

turned out to be huge clots--and take them to the doctor the next day.

The geneticist said that because of all the bleeding and other

complications there was almost no chance the fetus would make it to 20

weeks let alone full term.

My wife says one of my finest moments as

her husband came when I somehow made her laugh while she awaited the

abortion. My wife doesn't talk about her feelings of the abortion and

the "failed" pregnancy. But we've been together for more than a decade

and I know she will always be crushed by it. I know we made the right

decision for us but it still hurts badly. This was the son we would

never have.

My full post out of the first day of the America's Future Now! conference in DC is below. But I wanted to highlight Howard Dean's strong push for a public option, which I wrapped into the story:

During a lunchtime press conference, Howard Dean, recent past chair of the DNC and a doctor, said that it's more important to have a public plan than a bipartisan plan. "Bipartisan," he said, "is not an end in and of itself."

He said that Republicans haven't helped Obama with the stimulus package nor do they seem poised to offer an assist with approving his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation's highest court.

"If they're in there to shill for the insurance companies, I think we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said, suggesting that it be accomplished via budget reconciliation.

Dean added: "The American people voted for real change. They knew exactly what he was proposing when he was on the campaign trail."

(JENNIFER SKALKA)