There are two categories of opposition to the Common Core. One can oppose the Common Core on principle: it’s seen as a top-down imposition of standards that further burdens local districts, increases schools’ entanglements with the federal bureaucracy, and once again expands the government’s powers . Although the states’ process of adopting the Common Core was different from that of No Child Left Behind–the Common Core was not straightforwardly federally legislated–the objection to its adoption is consistent with conservative values.

Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have also opposed the Common Core (for English Language Arts) based on its content. However, often the proffered evidence of this damaging content do not hold up as effective indictments of the Common Core. These samples do not reflect the statements of the document usually for one of three reasons, all connected to implementation: 1.) publishing companies rushed to produce materials ostensibly aligning with the Common Core and some of the resulting textbooks and other materials lacked the quality we want to see in our schools; 2.) the resulting testing systems that were rolled out, again by private companies, had some defects that needed addressing by both the company and the schools administering them, forever creating an association in the minds of teachers, kids, and parents of Common Core with “awful days in the computer lab;” 3.) school districts could interpret the standards through their own lens of non-traditional instructional approaches, continuing to teach in the way they thought best no matter what the standards actually said, at times to the students’ detriment.