PTA Launches Campaign Backing Common Standards

Four states will initially be targeted with help of $1 million Gates grant.

A national organization, with philanthropic backing, is launching a campaign to build support for common academic standards among a potentially influential constituency: parents.

The National PTA has received a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to organize parent support for setting more uniform academic expectations in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina.

The undertaking is one of several examples of how backers of the Common Core State Standards Initiative are trying to lay a foundation for those documents’ adoption—and their eventual...