Skip to main content

Mobile Navigation

  • National
    • Policy
      • High Expectations
      • Quality Choices
      • Personalized Pathways
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Gadfly Newsletter
      • Flypaper Blog
    • Events
    • Scholars Program
  • Ohio
    • Policy
      • Priorities
      • Media & Testimony
    • Research
    • Commentary
      • Ohio Education Gadfly Biweekly
      • Ohio Gadfly Daily
  • Charter Authorizing
    • Application
    • Sponsored Schools
    • Resources
  • About
    • Mission
    • Board
    • Staff
    • Career
Home
Home
Advancing Educational Excellence

Main Navigation

  • National
  • Ohio
  • Charter Authorizing
  • About

Ohio Menu

  • Topics
    • Accountability & Testing
    • Advanced Education
    • Career & Technical Education
    • Charter Schools
    • Curriculum & Instruction
    • ESSA
    • Evidence-Based Learning
    • Governance
    • Personalized Learning
    • Private School Choice
    • School Finance
    • Standards
    • Teachers & School Leaders
  • Research
  • Policy
  • Commentary
    • Ohio Gadfly Newsletter
    • Ohio Gadfly Blog
    • Events

Skewering a widely circulated Common Core myth

Terry Ryan
7.8.2013

There are scads of misinformation being tossed about when it comes to the Common Core Academic Standards. There is so much that is being said and claimed that it is hard to know exactly where best to start the rebuttals. But one “tagline” being distributed widely by the anti-Common Core crowd in Ohio is especially galling because it is factually so wrong, yet pithy enough that critics share it widely anyway.

Ohioans Against the Common Core has been sending out emails with the following phrase in bold: “If Common Core was really about ‘the best standards,’ why did they adopt them before they were even written.”

Not sure who the “they” are being referred to in the tagline, but here is the timeline for the Common Core in Ohio.

Common Core draft K-12 standards were released in March 2010. Nearly 10,000 people and organizations responded to the draft standards. The final revised standards were released for mathematics and English language arts on June 2, 2010, with a majority of states adopting the standards in the subsequent months. The Ohio state board of education officially adopted the standards on June 18, 2010.

Topics:
Curriculum & Instruction
Tags: Common Core English studies Ohio

Terry Ryan was Vice-President for Ohio Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Research Institution.

He is the author, with Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Michael Lafferty of Ohio’s Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Fordham Logo

© 2026 The Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Privacy Policy
Usage Agreement

National

P.O. Box 110
Burke, VA 22009

202.223.5452

[email protected]

Ohio

P.O. Box 82291
Columbus, OH 43202

614.223.1580

[email protected]

Sponsorship

130 West Second Street, Suite 410
Dayton, Ohio 45402

937.227.3368

[email protected]