“What’s different about mathematics in Maine from California? I don’t believe there is a difference,” Susan Gendron, Maine’s commissioner for education, told the Washington Post last week, as she urged states to adopt a newly-proposed set of common academic standards. It is estimated that by the end of the year, half of all states will adopt the national standards, which were drafted by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Although the White House had no role in drafting them, the standards reinforce a goal of the administration to ensure that all students graduate college- or career-ready. Administration officials believe that a set of national standards is necessary to help fix troubled schools and to make the U.S. more competitive, according to the Post. Previous administrations tried and failed to get states to enact a voluntary set of national standards, resulting in a crazy quilt of widely varying state benchmarks. And critics claim that some states have watered down their standards to ensure they’re eligible for federal funding. What sort of achievement requirements are being recommended? Here are two examples, cited by the Post: all 8th graders would have to understand the cornerstones of algebra and geometry, being able to use linear equations to solve an unknown, for example. They would also be capable of explaining a Pythagorean Theorem proof on the properties of a right triangle.

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