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Politics K-12 kept watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: Federal, States.

Standards & Accountability

See Our Analysis of Where the Common Core Stands in States

By Andrew Ujifusa — November 01, 2016 1 min read
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As states continue to address the Common Core State Standards in various ways, more and more people have been wondering about the status of the common core nationally.

It’s a complicated issue, in large part because clear and direct repeals of the common core are not especially common. We last checked in on where common core stands last summer. Now we’ve updated our map to reflect the standards’ position in states. Click here to see our new common-core infographic and additional important information about the standards. And check out our Infogram about the common core below:

As an example of how tricky this issue can get, consider New Jersey and West Virginia. Both have prominently said they’ve moved away from the common core in some fashion. However, both are still using tests explicitly aligned to the common core (PARCC and Smarter Balanced, respectively) for the 2016-17 school year. Does that indicate those two states haven’t truly thrown the common core overboard? Analysts and advocates can disagree, of course.

Common core isn’t quite the political hot-button it used to be in states, although there’s still plenty of debate about the standards’ impact and effectiveness. As for the presidential candidates, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton supports the common core, although she also apparently called it a “political failure,” according to a speech publicized by WikiLeaks. And Republican nominee Donald Trump says the common core is terrible and says he’ll get rid of it, although he hasn’t said how.

Have any thoughts about our analysis? Let us know in the comments section.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Politics K-12 blog.