A strange element to the mounting Republican opposition to the Common Core State Standards is that the effort was led by a GOP governor and one familiar to Georgians, Sonny Perdue.

Perdue was critical in championing the Common Core initiative, a product of the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Georgia, 44 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia are moving to the uniform and tougher set of expectations for learning.

That is probably why current Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal told the Marietta Daily Journal yesterday that he supports the standards, which have come under fire from the Republican National Committee and several state legislatures, including Alabama.

An effort in the Georgia Legislature this session to dump the standards didn't go anywhere. While Georgia is being cited in several news stories as one of the states where Common Core is in trouble, I am unsure why. The standards have the support of most GOP leaders in the state.

Deal told the Marietta newspaper:

“I think the misconception is that this was federally imposed on the state of Georgia and on the other states, and I think all but maybe one or two actually have subscribed to the Common Core. The federal government did not mandate it, they did not control it, they did not dictate its content. I think there is also a misunderstanding between the Common Core standards, which simply says these are the things that a student needs to know or be able to do at certain grade levels in their school progress, as opposed to a Common Core curriculum, whereby you dictate what is taught. That is not the case here, so I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about what the Common Core does….Until somebody can show me a reason for deviating from it, and I think anytime you take major action like that, you have to have a good justification for it."

Supporters say new standards will make students more college- and career-ready, allow apple-to-apple state comparisons and ease the transition for students moving from one state to another.

Critics maintain that what began as a state-led initiative now has been overtaken by the federal government, which is linking adoption and adherence with grant money.

In early briefings on the standards, a major fear of proponents was that the issue would be politicized and turned into a state vs. feds showdown. So, the role of states in formulating the standards was stressed again and again.

That strategy doesn't appear to have succeeded as most of the anti-Common Core rhetoric in statehouses demonizes the initiative as an Obama program. (On the other hand, the educators opposed to the standards tend to focus on what they consider an over reliance on standardized testing.)

Consider Alabama. While the Alabama state Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards more than two years ago, the state Senate has been attempting to repeal them this month. However, the campaign stalled this week, according to the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper, when Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh said he would not allow the repeal bills  to come to the Senate floor. Alabama schools have already put the math standards in place, and Marsh feared a repeal would disrupt classroom instruction.

According to the Montgomery report:

“My disappointment is unbelievable,” said Republican Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale, the sponsor of legislation to repeal the standards. The senator said he was told the proposal would be on the Tuesday agenda that the Senate was taking up and that he knew there was an issue when it was not on the list.

Beason said the supporters and opponents deserve a vote on whether to repeal Common Core. He said the standards centralize “education decisions, which has never happened.”

“It is totally unproven,” Beason said of the standards. He said Alabama’s standards are better than Common Core “across the board.”

Beason and other opponents of the standards argue they allow the State Board of Education, which approved the standards, to abdicate its duty to establish standards in Alabama and put Alabama schools at the mercy of the federal government, which tied grant money to the standards.

 In its recent resolution opposing Common Core, the Republican National Committee stated:

 RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived “normal,” and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee rejects the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent and that it rejects the sharing of such personal data, without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent, with any person or entity other than schools or education agencies within the state, and be it finally

RESOLVED, the 2012 Republican Party Platform specifically states the need to repeal the numerous federal regulations which interfere with State and local control of public schools, (p36) (3.); and therefore, the Republican National Committee rejects this CCSS plan which creates and fits the country with a nationwide straitjacket on academic freedom and achievement.

In an editorial five days ago, The New York Times called for a halt to the attacks on the Common Core:

The standards are flexible so that states and localities can implement them in varying ways. But the whole point of the exercise is to replace the mediocre patchwork of learning standards that put American children at a distinct disadvantage when compared with their peers abroad.

The standards are fairly new, and shifting to them will cause some anguish, particularly among parents. Last year, Kentucky, the first state to adopt tests based on the Common Core system, found that the proportion of students who were rated “proficient” or better in math and reading dropped by about a third in both middle and elementary school the first time the new tests were given. That is likely to happen in state after state as weak tests are replaced by stronger ones.

But if the country retreats from the Common Core reforms, it will be surrendering the field to competitors that have already left it behind in math and science education, which are essential to participation in the 21st-century work force.