One of those opponents is Bill Evers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He was an assistant education secretary under President Bush.

BILL EVERS: "We are having Washington, DC, having control and final say over, and supervision over and direction over, what is happening in the classrooms of America, in the public schools. Most changes, most positive influences have bubbled up from below.

"So it's closing the door on innovation by locking in a national, uniform bureaucratic system. But the states don’t have a problem in setting their curriculum -- they’ve been doing it ever since there've been public schools.”

Richard Reilly was education secretary to President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Mr. Reilly says the federal government is not forcing the common core standards on states.

RICHARD REILLY: "Conservatives would be concerned if we had federal-mandated common core standards. That’s not what we have. It’s a state-driven measure. High standards, challenging work for young people across the country. To be challenged to do and be the same, and not one way in Texas and another way in South Carolina."

Mr. Reilly says when he served in the nineteen nineties, he pushed states to develop their own statewide standards. But some of those standards were not very strong, he says, so he believes national standards are needed.

But Bill Evers says technology now makes it easier to develop individual learning plans to meet the different needs of students.