Is there a “conservative” attitude toward the new(ish) Common Core State Standards?  Though as we’ve noted, conservatives disagree, the session at the on-going Conservative Political Action Conference about the standards sounded like a bash-fest.

In the pages of The American Conservative, Gracy Olmstead offered a fly-on-the-wall report.  Conservative luminaries such as Phyllis Schlafly, Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation, Robert Enlow of the Friedman Foundation, and Jim Stergios of the Pioneer Institute took the CCSS to task for centralizing education.

Such centralization, Schlafly warned, does not occur in an ideological vacuum.  With more control from Washington comes more “liberal propaganda,” Schlafly insisted, as she has done before.  Enlow warned that centralization introduced yet another level of government control, blocking parents from their rightful control of their children’s education.  And Stergios insisted that the CCSS claim to be “state-led” was laughable.

Did this CPAC panel define the only “conservative” position on the Common Core?  As Stergios noted, many conservatives like the core.  He thought that opinion was “ludicrous.”  But correspondent Gracy Olmstead disagreed.  She noted that the standards still attracted fans and foes from all political sides.