Nobody on this site is shocked by this. We’ve see this coming from 2,100 miles away. The Governor, State Board members, and USOE keep denying it because they were deceived and have become defensive over time. Now they are happy in their delusions of reality. The longer we stay on the Common Core agenda (standards, computer adaptive assessments, data collection, etc…), the more beholden Utah will be to comply with federal mandates and curriculum interference. We need Utah off this whole agenda and back on its own high quality state standards. The feds are tightening the noose.

From the CATO institute: http://www.cato.org/blog/budget-proposal-its-not-just-about-core-coercion-anymore

The big story in the proposal is – or, at least, should be – that the president almost certainly wants to make the Core permanent by attaching annual federal funding to its use, and to performance on related tests. Just as the administration called for in its 2010 NCLB reauthorization proposal, POTUS wants to employ more than a one-time program, or temporary waivers, to impose “college and career-ready standards,” which–thanks to RTTT and waivers–is essentially synonymous with Common Core. In fact, President Obama proposes changing Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – of which NCLB is just the most recent reauthorization – to a program called “College- and Career-Ready Students,” with an annual appropriation of over $14 billion.

This was utterly predictable. Core opponents, who are so often smeared as conspiracy mongers, know full well both what the President has proposed in the past, and how government accumulates power over time. RTTT was the foot in the door, and once most states were using the same standards and tests, there was little question what Washington would eventually say: “Since everyone’s using the same tests and standards anyway, might as well make federal policy based on that.”