Common Core: Strange bedfellows edition

by David Safier

I don't often see eye to eye with the conservative blog, Seeing Red AZ. Actually, we don't see eye to eye this time either. But we both wrote about Huppenthal's attempt to rename Common Core — he's decided on “Arizona College and Career Ready Standards" — with the same level of disdain. Here's what I wrote: The Common Core by any other name . . .  Here's the Seeing Red AZ post: Huppenthal’s con job: Pushes renaming Common Core.

My conservative counterpart has a very different problem with Common Core than I do, citing wildly different "authorities."

Instead of protecting Arizona’s Constitutional requirement for local control of our district schools, Huppenthal is pushing policies that will cede control of every facet of our education system to federal bureaucrats. Conservative syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin has written extensively about what she calls “Rotten to the Core.”  “Obama’s War on Academic Standards,” is an excellent place to begin.

From my point of view, the standards themselves aren't as problematic as the No-Child-Left-Behind-on-steroids testing that comes with them. And I would be more likely to cite Diane Ravitch or some other progressive educator than wild Michelle Malkin.

But this indicates the problems Hupp faces in selling the Common Core. He doesn't give a damn what the left thinks. We don't like him anyway. But he's in trouble when he's being attacked from the right, just like lots of other not-completely-crazy Republicans across the country. The right has someone waiting in the wings to challenge Hupp: Diane Douglas. I know nothing about her, but in a low turnout primary where the wingnuts come out to play, Hupp could find himself in some trouble if Douglas is at all credible.