Umm, sorry to disturb your "conservatives are evil" rant, but then how do you explain the epically failing schools of many american inner cities? Cities that have been run top to bottom, city council to school district by liberals.
"Conservatives" are also for school choice, charter schools, school vouchers, all of which are designed to empower parents in those failing inner city districts some hope.
Now, I've kinda lambasted the liberal city government here, but their intentions aren't all bad. However, this is not a "throw money at" sort of problem.
I'll agree that Common Core has been combined with other items in order to criticize it. Common Standards are a "good thing", in fact we need to pull the standards back up from the constant lowering of them that has happened over time. I completely support this at the state level, from whence Common Core originated.
However, certain entrenched forces in the education community, and federal regulators glommed on to Common Core with the intent to have it drive curriculum and content. This was, and is, a mistake. The KISS principle should have driven the Common Standards, but they complicated it with federal mandates and absurd curriculum.
The "new" math they are trying to teach under the banner of Common Core makes me fear that we will end up with an upcoming generation that does't have the math skills to undertake a College Education in Engineering and Science.
Standards and levels of understanding are good. Demanding that everyone teach via the same methods (unproven ones at that) is not.