I have not read too much on this, but listing these areas as core areas might have an opposite effect than intended. One provision of the NCLB act was that teachers need to be "highly qualified" and left that up to the states to decide what that meant. To my knowledge most states requirements for "highly qualified" teachers is that for "core subjects" they hold at least a bachelor's degree in that field.
The outcome of this is that many of these classes could be dropped because a Math teacher who had a minor in CS would no longer be considered highly qualified to teach in that subject. By raising title of these subjects but not having any standardized testing on the subject would likely cause schools to drop those areas in order to keep the arbitrary percentage of "highly qualified" teachers teaching classes in order to keep funding.
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian