John Stossel found that there was one topic his audience wanted to know more about. His TV producers asked their Facebook audience to vote on a topic they would most like to hear discussed on his year-end show. The overwhelming winner was the educational standards program known as Common Core.

If you don’t know anything about Common Core, you are not alone. A Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on American attitudes toward education revealed that nearly two-thirds (63%) of Americans are clueless about the Common Core Standards. They better get informed since 45 states have adopted those standards.

Common Core is but another top-down approach to educational reform that is now being adopted in many states because of funding. In the past, many governors and former governors endorsed the program. Many have changed their minds once they have seen what Common Core really means.

It is understandable why many jumped on board. We are spending more money on public education that ever before. Per-student spending has tripled, but test results are stagnant. Central planning and standards aren’t the answer. Imposing a single teaching plan on 15,000 school districts isn’t the answer.

Michelle Malkin has written a series of columns about the standards in various disciplines. A Stanford University math professor on the Common Core validation panel concluded that it would place American students two years behind their peers in other high-achieving countries. The literature standards de-emphasize literary works for “informational texts.” A world geography lesson on Islam banned words like “terrorist” in favor of the term “freedom fighter.”

John Whitehead is concerned with the methodology of Common Core. He believes it will “create a generation of test-takers capable of little else, molded and shaped by the federal government and its corporate allies into what it consider to be ideal citizens.”

It is not surprising that many concerned parents, teachers, and school boards are pushing back against the Common Core curriculum. They reject the standards and feel that Common Core is rotten to the core.