Common Core\u00a0 Business gets Schooled\u00a0\u00a0 By Peter Elkind<\/p>\n
Photograph by Sam Kaplan for Fortune; Styling by Brian Byrne<\/p>\n
When Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, and others pushed for the education standards, they incurred the wrath of Tea Party conservatives and got a painful lesson in modern politics.<\/strong><\/p>\n In February 2014, two of the world\u2019s richest men, Bill Gates and Charles Koch, dined together at a West Coast restaurant.<\/p>\n They made quite the odd couple: the Seattle Microsoft\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>MSFT<\/a>\u00a00.31%\u00a0\u00a0co-founder, now devoting his time and fortune to changing the world, and the Kansas industrialist, still running his private conglomerate while working to shrink government to the size of a pea.<\/p>\n The two discussed many subjects and even touched, diplomatically, on topics they disagree about, such as climate change. There was a second sensitive subject that Gates broached, and it didn\u2019t come up by chance. His team at the Gates Foundation had engaged in a process it calls a \u201cfaction analysis\u201d and identified Koch as a key opponent on a crucial issue. Gates had a mission that night: He wanted to persuade Koch to change his mind about Common Core.<\/p>\n The two men were bankrolling opposite sides in a raging war over the future of American education. Through his charitable foundation, Gates has spent more than $220 million on the Common Core education standards, aimed at boosting the dismal performance of American children. Starting in 2010, 45 states adopted the benchmarks\u2014which spell out what kids from kindergarten through high school should learn in reading and math\u2014with little controversy. But a backlash ensued, and by early 2014 the standards were under fierce political attack, facing repeal in many states. Koch and his brother David were sponsoring several Tea Party\u2013aligned groups that were fueling the rebellion.<\/p>\n The ABCs of Common Core<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now Gates tried to convince his dinner companion that opposing Common Core was bad both for Koch Industries, which employs 60,000 Americans, and the rest of U.S. business. \u201cBill talked to Koch to understand what his concerns were and to explain what he thought was the potential and the promise for the Common Core,\u201d says Allan Golston, president of the U.S. program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. \u201cWhen someone doesn\u2019t believe in what you\u2019re doing, it\u2019s important to engage with them.\u201d<\/p>\n But Koch wasn\u2019t willing to engage with Gates on the issue. Instead, like a senator politely brushing off a constituent, he gave Gates the name of one of his staffers who focuses on the subject and suggested Gates call the staffer. The Microsoft billionaire left empty-handed. (Both men declined to discuss their dinner.)<\/p>\n This extraordinary t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate is just one example of how the war over Common Core has personally engaged\u2014and bedeviled\u2014some of America\u2019s most powerful business leaders. Hugely controversial, it has thrust executives into the uncomfortable intersection of business and politics.<\/p>\n In truth, Common Core might not exist without the corporate community. The nation\u2019s business establishment has been clamoring for more rigorous education standards\u2014ones that would apply across the entire nation\u2014for years. It views them as desperately needed to prepare America\u2019s future workforce and to bolster its global competitiveness. One measure of the deep involvement of corporate leaders: The Common Core standards were drafted by determining the skills that businesses (and colleges) need and then working backward to decide what students should learn.<\/p>\n Organizations such as the Business Roundtable have devoted considerable effort to the initiative. The education chair for that association of CEOs, Exxon Mobil\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>XOM<\/a>\u00a0-2.02%\u00a0\u00a0chief Rex Tillerson, has played a particularly prominent role. A stern, commanding figure with an Old Testament glare and a chewy Texas drawl, Tillerson is an unlikely person to lead a campaign of persuasion. (Never a fan of the press, he declined to speak to\u00a0Fortune\u00a0for this article.)<\/p>\n Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, has led the Business Roundtable\u2019s advocacy for common core. The staunch Republican has found himself accused of promoting big government.Photo: Susana Vera\u2014 Reuters<\/p>\n But Tillerson has taken on the challenge with trademark intensity. He has pressed other CEOs to join the cause, spread the word by appearing at education summits, underwritten TV advertisements, and personally called legislators in multiple states to press for their support. His company went so far as to cut off campaign contributions to some politicians\u2014even those who support the oil and gas industry\u2014who spurned Tillerson\u2019s entreaties on Common Core.<\/p>\n Other companies have been much more timid or have retreated in the face of the controversy. For example, General Electric\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>GE<\/a>\u00a0-1.55%\u00a0\u2014once among Common Core\u2019s biggest supporters\u2014has fled the fight after becoming a Tea Party target. \u201cThere\u2019s a somewhat unwritten rule that if you\u2019re a CEO, you only get your business involved in an issue that rewards your company in some fashion,\u201d says former Intel chief Craig Barrett. Education reform is \u201csuch a hot topic,\u201d especially as Common Core made it \u201cmore of a tar baby,\u201d that \u201cit\u2019s sometimes difficult to get people enthusiastic,\u201d he adds. \u201cA lot of people just sit on the sidelines.\u201d Adds Barrett, with exasperation: \u201cIt\u2019s turned into a political food fight instead of an education discussion\u2009\u2026\u2009The hope is that rational minds will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a story about the role Big Business has played in the war over Common Core: how a handful of executives helped turn a decades-old ambition for education reform into reality, their fumbling bewilderment at finding themselves assailed by opposition they didn\u2019t expect or understand, and how they\u2019ve regrouped and rallied to defend what they wrought. It\u2019s a high-stakes conflict that has generated breathtaking political flip-flops (see \u201cThe Flip-floppers and the Wafflers\u201d<\/a>) and upended traditional alliances, turning natural bedfellows into bitter enemies. It has seen some of the nation\u2019s foremost capitalists accused of promoting an \u201cimmoral,\u201d \u201cfreedom-robbing,\u201d \u201csocialist agenda,\u201d aimed at turning America\u2019s children into \u201cmindless drones for the corporate salt mines.\u201d<\/p>\n Along the way it has reinforced the depth of a growing divide that once would have seemed inconceivable: the gap between America\u2019s most ardent conservatives and Big Business, which the former increasingly view as part of an undifferentiated \u201cestablishment\u201d and hence nearly as odious as government. For now, Common Core has established itself in the vast majority of states and seems to be taking root. But the conflict over this issue shares many traits with the crusades over Obamacare, and one of them is this: Its most fervent opponents show not the slightest sign of relenting.<\/p>\n Protesters outside a State Board of Education meeting in Irvine, Calif. in 2014.Photo: Anna Reed\u2014The Orange County Register\/Zumapress.com<\/p>\n For decades, CEOs have bemoaned the state of U.S. education\u2014with justification. American 15-year-olds ranked 27th out of 34 industrialized countries in math, and 17th in reading in the most recent international tests. Colleges complain that significant percentages of their entering freshmen require a remedial course. Businesses say they can\u2019t find enough skilled U.S. workers.<\/p>\n But the executive mind-set on the issue\u2014favoring consistency, efficiency, and accountability\u2014has clashed with the American tradition of local control. \u201cWhy on earth can\u2019t we insist on universal standards at least for 9-year-olds?\u201d asked Alcoa\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>AA<\/a>\u00a0-2.42%\u00a0\u00a0CEO Paul O\u2019Neill at a 1996 education summit convened by then-IBM\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>IBM<\/a>\u00a0-0.93%\u00a0\u00a0CEO Lou Gerstner and attended by business leaders and 43 governors. \u201cCan\u2019t a 9-year-old multiply by nine and get the same answer in all 50 states?\u201d<\/p>\n To CEOs, the issue has always been a no-brainer. In an increasingly global economy, what sense does it make for America to have 50 different sets of education standards? Gerstner helped establish a nonprofit called Achieve Inc. in 1996 to promote education reform. With a board filled with governors and CEOs, the group served, over the next two decades, as a sort of lab for the national standards movement.<\/p>\n The modern era of U.S. education reform actually dates back to 1983, when a commission convened under Ronald Reagan produced a landmark report titled\u00a0A Nation at Risk.\u00a0\u201cA rising tide of mediocrity,\u201d it warned, \u201cthreatens our very future.\u201d In response, William Bennett, Reagan\u2019s education secretary, promoted mastery of a \u201ccommon core of worthwhile knowledge, important skills, and sound ideas.\u201d (Bennett went so far as to design a full K-12 curriculum.)<\/p>\n Conservatives cheered. But the idea was strictly voluntary\u2014\u201cIt remains a matter best left for final decision to state, local, and private authorities,\u201d Bennett noted\u2014and it didn\u2019t get far.<\/p>\n Uncle Sam\u2019s role in education is an exquisitely sensitive issue: Federal law bars the government from dictating education standards or classroom curriculums. And state and local officials\u2014who provide about 90% of public education funding\u2014prize their control.<\/p>\n Reform efforts have needed to dance around that by seeking to persuade 50 states to embrace change voluntarily. \u201cYou really can\u2019t work this issue on a national level,\u201d says Gerstner. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to work it state by state, city by city. It\u2019s messy. Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t yield completely to reason, which businesspeople like.\u201d<\/p>\n Every president since Reagan has flailed at this issue. George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton convened special education panels and launched commissions in unsuccessful attempts to establish voluntary national standards. Finally, the Clinton administration was able to pass a watered-down initiative that required states to adopt standards and tests\u2014but left them entirely up to individual states.<\/p>\n Most established tragically low expectations. President George W. Bush\u2019s 2002 education reform, \u201cNo Child Left Behind,\u201d only worsened this problem. It set the impossible requirement that 100% of students be \u201cproficient\u201d in reading and math by 2014, and punished schools that weren\u2019t making adequate progress.<\/p>\n Photo: Nelson Ching\u2014Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n To bring themselves closer to 100%, many states simply lowered the score needed to pass their tests. The result: In 2007, Mississippi judged 90% of its fourth graders \u201cproficient\u201d on the state\u2019s reading test, yet only 19% measured up on a standardized national exam given every two years. In Georgia, 82% of eighth-graders met the state\u2019s minimums in math, while just 25% passed the national test. A yawning \u201chonesty gap,\u201d as it came to be known, prevailed in most states.<\/p>\n Finally, in April 2009, organizations representing state governors and education chiefs agreed to develop a single set of rigorous standards: the Common Core State Standards Initiative. The ambition was to make all children \u201ccollege- and career-ready,\u201d with the same expectations in Mississippi as in Massachusetts. The standards would spell out what students should learn at each grade level, without dictating curriculum or how it would be taught. They would be accompanied by tough new standardized tests to measure progress in meeting the benchmarks. The tests were the hammer to drive improvement and provide accountability. The goal was universal acceptance. This would allow comparisons among states, help the children who move annually to a new state stay on track, and permit sharing of education ideas, textbooks, and teaching materials.<\/p>\n Promoters of the Common Core took three big steps to smooth adoption. First, they developed standards for only English language arts and math, avoiding the ideological land mines in teaching history and science, such as slavery, evolution, and global warming.<\/p>\n Second, they enlisted Bill Gates, whose foundation had already sunk hundreds of millions into other education initiatives. The Gates Foundation would help bankroll virtually every aspect of Common Core\u2019s development, promotion, and implementation. \u201cThis is like having a common electrical system,\u201d Gates told the\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0in 2011. \u201cIt just makes sense to me.\u201d His spending would be critical\u2014but it would later feed a view among some that one rich man shouldn\u2019t have so much say over a national policy.<\/p>\n In the short term, though, Gates\u2019 millions helped make possible the third (and most important) step: writing the new standards without a penny from Uncle Sam. \u201cState-led initiative\u201d became advocates\u2019 mantra for describing Common Core. \u201cIt had been crafted as a local-control issue, and we wanted to keep it that way,\u201d says former Intel\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>INTC<\/a>\u00a0-1.04%\u00a0\u00a0CEO Barrett. \u201cAll the groundwork had been done very carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n When it came time to draft the provisions, career readiness was a central focus. The writers spent their first two months learning what colleges and businesses wanted high school graduates to know by the time they arrived on their doorstep. From there, the writers \u201cback mapped,\u201d crafting grade-by-grade benchmarks to get them there. The resulting standards were then reviewed by teachers\u2019 unions, state education officials, academic groups, feedback panels, and independent validation committees. Two drafts were published online, generating 10,000 public comments and prompting further revisions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like the CEOs, federal education officials always knew this was treacherous terrain. \u201cThere was definitely discussion about whether the feds should get involved because of the potential for political backlash,\u201d says Joanne Weiss, a former top deputy in the U.S. Department of Education under Obama. Now a consultant, Weiss acknowledges that the administration walked a tightrope. \u201cThe department tried to get involved in a way that just handed money back to the states, that let them do their own thing. We wanted to be both supportive and arm\u2019s length\u2014admittedly a hard balancing act.\u201d Common Core\u2019s architects also worked to avoid any federal taint.<\/p>\n For a time, it all worked according to plan\u2014in fact, far better than anyone had imagined. The new standards rolled out to general praise from educators and endorsements from business groups. The most detailed appraisal (funded with $959,116 in Gates Foundation money) was conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning Washington think tank. Its 370-page analysis found the Core standards \u201cclearly superior\u201d to those in place in \u201cthe vast majority of states.\u201d<\/p>\n Forty-five states, more than half of them led by Republican governors, adopted Common Core by the end of 2011\u2014remarkably short order. The only holdouts were Virginia, Alaska, Texas, and Nebraska; Minnesota took up the standards, but only for English.<\/p>\n The Obama administration tried to tiptoe. It didn\u2019t attempt to mandate implementation, but it strongly encouraged it. The administration accelerated the process by launching Race to the Top, a competition among the states for $4.35 billion in federal grants. Applicants received 70 points (out of a possible 500) for approving \u201cenhanced standards and high-quality assessments\u201d (most obviously Common Core) by August 2010. In the midst of a deep recession, the cash promoted a quick embrace. The federal Education Department also provided $350 million in grants to two consortia set up by the states to develop the new Common Core tests.<\/p>\n In the 45 states, adoption of the standards, which typically required just a public meeting and approval by the state education board, stirred little notice. \u201cZero,\u201d recalls Tony Bennett, the elected superintendent of public instruction in Indiana when the state signed on. \u201cNo controversy. No criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n Victory in hand, Common Core advocates turned their energies toward the task of implementation. They didn\u2019t foresee that a deep well of opposition was about to erupt. \u201cIn a sense the early days almost went too easy for us,\u201d Gates would later say. \u201cEverything seemed to be on track\u2009\u2026\u2009We didn\u2019t realize the issue would be confounded.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The \u201cconfounders\u201d would turn out to be just the sort of people who today cause fits for billionaires and CEOs used to exercising power through traditional channels: passionate regular folks linked to activist networks with a firm grasp on how to maximize the power of the Internet and social media. Gayle Ruzicka, who volunteers as Utah state president for Phyllis Schlafly\u2019s Eagle Forum, had long been battling to preserve local control of schools. Indeed, Ruzicka takes \u201clocal control\u201d far beyond where most parents would: She homeschooled all 12 of her children. Ruzicka was deeply concerned by what, in late 2010, she began to hear about Common Core. To her it sounded like, as she puts it, \u201ca backdoor way in to national standards.\u201d<\/p>\n States had adopted Common Core, Ruzicka says, \u201cbefore parents even knew what happened.\u201d In retrospect, approving an education transformation without building parental support would turn out to be a huge mistake. It meant that the opposition would mass and organize before many potential allies of the standards even realized they needed to be defended. Ruzicka began gearing up to fight it. She coined a phrase that crystallized her view of the problem with devastating rhetorical force: \u201cObamacore.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Alex Wong\u2014Getty Images<\/p>\n Ruzicka wasn\u2019t alone. In the fall of 2011, an Indiana mom named Heather Crossin became alarmed about changes in how her 8-year-old daughter was being taught math. Her third-grade homework didn\u2019t ask her just to solve three times nine\u2014it demanded that she explain the\u00a0reasoning\u00a0behind her answer. Crossin was at a loss to help. The principal at her child\u2019s school blamed the changes on Common Core.<\/p>\n Crossin, who once served as a legislative assistant to Republican Rep. Dan Burton, began organizing Hoosiers Against Common Core. She approached local Tea Party groups and welcomed the help of national organizations opposed to the standards, including the American Principles Project, where a man named Emmett McGroarty served as education director and as a key figure in the fight. They fed Crossin\u2019s group anti\u2013Common Core \u201cwhite papers,\u201d set up its website, helped plot strategy and write leaflets, and even flew in for local rallies and media interviews.<\/p>\n The grass-roots moms\u2019 rebellion, fanned through social media and the Tea Party network, quickly gained momentum in multiple states. Says Business Roundtable vice president Dane Linn, then education policy chief for the National Governors Association: \u201cWe heard the rumblings in the states. It was like prairie fire after prairie fire.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the first shocks for supporters of Common Core came in Indiana. There opponents targeted superintendent Bennett, a conservative Republican whose advocacy of school vouchers, charter schools, tough teacher evaluations, and Common Core had made him a darling of national reformers. In November 2012, Bennett was defeated in a reelection bid by a massively outspent Democratic opponent, a former teacher who had voiced skepticism about the standards. In the same election, Tea Party Republican Mike Pence succeeded Mitch Daniels, the term-limited GOP governor who had backed the standards. A few months later, Indiana delayed its implementation of Common Core.<\/p>\n Photograph by Sam Kaplan for Fortune<\/p>\n Tea Party groups soon made Common Core a national rallying cry. In 2013, Glenn Beck took up the cause, declaring it \u201cCommunism\u2014we are dealing with evil.\u201d That April the Republican National Committee passed a resolution condemning Common Core as an \u201cinappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived \u2018normal.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n In the hands of opponents, the \u201cstate-led\u201d plan, commissioned and adopted voluntarily by nearly all the nation\u2019s governors and school chiefs, was recast as a \u201cnational takeover of schooling\u201d developed \u201cbehind closed doors\u201d by \u201cprivate trade groups\u201d and, of course, Barack Obama. Indeed, the president\u2019s perceived imprimatur was the chief cause of opposition, in the view of some supporters. \u201cIf we had a Republican president, I don\u2019t think we would have had this backlash,\u201d says Cheryl Oldham, a former George W. Bush administration official who is now vice president of education policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. \u201cIt was because it was viewed to have been something that was Obama-led and -driven and forced on everyone. That just fueled a lot of the pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics claimed that Obama\u2019s Race to the Top funding had \u201cforced\u201d states to adopt Common Core. In fact, the federal government has a long history of granting states money to write standards. And the agreement that governors signed to develop Common Core explicitly welcomed Uncle Sam\u2019s cash, acknowledging an \u201cappropriate federal role in supporting this state-led effort\u201d with incentives. Obama would give critics further ammunition by repeatedly praising the higher standards, even as he took pains to note that they\u2019d been developed \u201cnot by Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n To be sure, there were legitimate questions: Was the implementation schedule too rushed for such a massive classroom change? Were the standards too tough\u2014or not rigorous enough? Some people were suspicious of business\u2019s support of the standards, charging that they were aimed at turning out corporate \u201cdrones\u201d and \u201cminimally educated worker bees.\u201d Did the English benchmarks emphasize analysis of \u201cinformational texts\u201d too much, at the expense of literature? Would it all be too costly? Some questioned the premise that smarter standards would boost learning at all.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Teachers\u2019 union leaders\u2014who had endorsed Common Core at the outset\u2014complained bitterly about its rollout, especially objecting to the immediate use of new standardized tests in their performance evaluations. This criticism of \u201chigh-stakes testing\u201d would later bring Common Core under assault from both ends of the political spectrum.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t wonky details that threatened to unravel the initiative. It was the most extreme claims, which spread like wildfire. Schlafly called Common Core an Obama scheme\u2014in collaboration with book publishers and Gates\u2014to \u201cdumb down\u201d schoolchildren, \u201cindoctrinate them to accept the left-wing view of America,\u201d engage in \u201cactive promotion of gay marriage,\u201d and \u201cdismantle moral society.\u201d Bloggers warned that Common Core would allow the federal government to engage in wholesale data collection on schoolchildren\u2014including iris scans\u2014then sell the information \u201cto the highest bidders.\u201d Parents charged that Common Core forced 10th-graders to read pornography out loud in class and required graphic sex-ed instruction. One Florida legislator asserted that the state\u2019s Common Core testing will \u201cattract every one of your children to become as homosexual as they possibly can.\u201d Never mind that none of those assertions were true.<\/p>\n Common Core was becoming politically radioactive for Republicans. \u201cAll of a sudden in 2013, you saw these Common Core repeal bills getting introduced all over the place,\u201d says Fordham Institute president Mike Petrilli. \u201cThose of us for it were caught pretty flat-footed. We realized this thing was at risk.\u201d If somebody didn\u2019t fight back, it appeared, Common Core might go down in flames.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt is utterly\u00a0distressing\u00a0to me to sit and watch these political debates around a subject that is so vitally important to our children, to the future of our country, and competitively,\u201d fumed the silver-haired man in the dark suit and gold tie, waving his arms in exasperation. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to tell you, I\u2019m\u00a0extraordinarily\u00a0disappointed in my home state. I\u2019ve spent many hours on the telephone during the last legislative session. To no avail. Could not make a dent. So the political forces around this are powerful. But they have to be taken on.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a strange thing indeed to hear Rex Tillerson, CEO of Texas-based Exxon Mobil, bemoaning his impotence at a 2014 panel discussion in Washington, D.C.\u2009 But such is the frustration of serving on the frontline in this war. Like other CEOs engaged in education reform, Tillerson sees high national standards as a \u201cbusiness imperative.\u201d Companies simply can\u2019t find enough skilled American workers.<\/p>\n But Tillerson articulates his view in a fashion unlikely to resonate with the average parent. \u201cI\u2019m not sure public schools understand that\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0their customer\u2014that we, the business community, are your customer,\u201d said Tillerson during the panel discussion. \u201cWhat they don\u2019t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Exxon CEO didn\u2019t hesitate to extend his analogy. \u201cNow is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we\u2019re not interested?\u201d American schools, Tillerson declared, \u201chave got to step up the performance level\u2014or they\u2019re basically turning out defective products that have no future. Unfortunately, the defective products are human beings. So it\u2019s really serious. It\u2019s tragic. But that\u2019s where we find ourselves today.\u201d<\/p>\n Exxon Mobil\u2019s philanthropy has long been focused on math and science education. Tillerson himself became deeply engaged in the Common Core fight in early 2012, when he became chairman of the education and workforce committee for the Business Roundtable, the powerful Washington, D.C., and trade group for 202 big-company CEOs.<\/p>\n But while opponents like Ruzicka and Crossin harnessed the power of the web, Tillerson\u2019s team turned to an older, more genteel form of media\u2014the kind that is better at reaching silver-haired CEOs than, say, blogger moms. In April 2012, Exxon Mobil ran an advertisement during the CBS telecast of the Masters golf tournament. Common Core is \u201cunlocking a better way to prepare our children for college and careers,\u201d the ad argued. The tagline: \u201cJoin Exxon Mobil in supporting the Common Core State Standards Initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say whether the Exxon ad had any impact when it first appeared. But by the time it aired again a year later, it generated a reaction\u2014a deeply hostile one. Glenn Beck responded with a 12-minute polemic, and emails\u201499% critical, according to ExxonMobil Foundation executive director Pat McCarthy\u2014cascaded in. \u201cBig Businesses Whore for Common Core,\u201d headlined one blog post discussing the ads. Critics began urging a company boycott. Wrote one: \u201cCut the gas cards up\u2009\u2026\u2009this is disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the government expressed frustration. In May 2013, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan scolded executives at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event for failing to do more to defend Common Core: \u201cI don\u2019t understand why the business community is so passive when these kinds of things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Many companies stayed on the sidelines. Worse, one staunch supporter\u2014GE (see below<\/a>)\u2014abandoned the fight.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As the threat grew during 2013, Common Core\u2019s supporters struggled with how to fight back. \u201cOur responses initially were fact-based,\u201d says Achieve\u2019s president, Mike Cohen. \u201cBut the opposition\u2019s appeals were more emotional than that. It turned out facts didn\u2019t often matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Everyone wanted to coordinate strategy; supporters considered a national advocacy campaign, including TV ads. But advocates didn\u2019t want to reinforce the very notion they were trying to combat. \u201cHaving someone from Washington explain that there\u2019s not really a conspiracy here doesn\u2019t really put the fire out,\u201d notes Cohen.<\/p>\n Grass-roots rage had made Common Core a potent issue. Many Republican officials who had backed the standards were now flip-flopping. Presidential aspirants performed some of the most remarkable acrobatics. In Oklahoma in 2013, Common Core supporters enlisted Mike Huckabee, the former governor of next-door Arkansas, to fight a growing repeal movement. Huckabee wrote a two-page letter urging lawmakers to stay the course: \u201cI\u2019ve heard the argument these standards \u2018threaten local control\u2019 of what\u2019s being taught in Oklahoma classrooms. Speaking from one conservative to another, let me assure you this simply is not true.\u201d Huckabee called the Common Core standards \u201cnear and dear to my heart\u2009\u2026\u2009something to embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than two years later, after announcing plans to seek the Republican presidential nomination, Huckabee had a different view. \u201cWe must kill Common Core and restore common sense,\u201d he declared on his campaign website. Huckabee was hardly alone in reversing his position.<\/p>\n Conservative politicians cast Common Core as a looming threat to liberty. Even in Texas, which never adopted the standards, the state legislature\u2014in the name of defending local control of education\u2014passed a law in June 2013 making it\u00a0illegal\u00a0for any school district to use the Common Core standards. In his successful run for governor, Greg Abbott vowed to \u201ccrush\u201d Common Core.<\/p>\n At the Business Roundtable, Tillerson importuned his fellow CEOs at every meeting to \u201cbe visible in their support\u201d and \u201cpick up the phone and call key state leaders to voice their support for staying the course,\u201d according to Linn, who became the group\u2019s education specialist around that time. The Exxon CEO urged them to wield their lobbying and economic clout, especially in states where they operated major facilities with lots of jobs. Tillerson was so persistent that he annoyed some of his CEO peers.<\/p>\n Some companies\u2014such as Intel and Cisco\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>CSCO<\/a>\u00a0-2.48%\u00a0\u2014promoted the standards. But the response from others fell short. The Exxon Mobil CEO simply couldn\u2019t move his peers amid the political heat.<\/p>\n Tillerson didn\u2019t hesitate to flex his own muscle. In May 2013, after Pennsylvania delayed implementation, he fired off a letter reminding the governor and others that his company had \u201csignificant operations\u201d there. Common Core, he advised them, was necessary to give Exxon Mobil \u201cthe confidence that the education standards we require for employment will be met by your state\u2019s graduates.\u201d An education blogger quickly branded this a \u201cMafia-style letter,\u201d and suggested Pennsylvania\u2019s governor \u201cmay soon wake to a horse\u2019s head laying in his bed, which will smell vaguely of gasoline.\u201d<\/p>\n Five months later, Tillerson was even less subtle, warning lawmakers contemplating repeal that Exxon Mobil might not hire anyone from states that don\u2019t have Common Core. \u201cIf I can\u2019t find the workforce in the state that I\u2019m in, I will go to the next state and find that workforce,\u201d he told NBC\u2019s Tom Brokaw in an interview on stage at an education conference. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to look in states that are using the Common Core State Standards because I have a high degree of confidence in the kids that graduate under that system.\u201d<\/p>\n The persistent advocacy from Exxon\u2019s gruff CEO, a staunch Republican and blunt critic of federal regulation, drew some particularly improbable attacks. Tom Borelli, then a leader of Tea Party group FreedomWorks, called Tillerson\u2019s support \u201canother example of the Big Business establishment joining ranks with big government to expand centralized control of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Fourth grade students discuss fraction problems at Piney Branch Elementary School in Takoma Park, Md. in 2013.Photo: Linda Davidson\u2014The Washington Post via Getty Images<\/p>\n By early 2014, the tide seemed to be turning against Common Core. Indiana became the first state to drop out entirely. South Carolina soon followed. Over the next year state lawmakers would introduce more than 100 bills to limit or halt implementation and 40 to drop Common Core altogether, according to a tally by the National Conference of State Legislators.<\/p>\n Oklahoma would become the site of the most dramatic reversal for Common Core to date. Mary Fallin had won election as the state\u2019s first woman governor as a strong supporter of Common Core. She vigorously defended the standards in a January 2014 speech to the National Governors Association.<\/p>\n That spring the Oklahoma legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that didn\u2019t just scrap Common Core. It dictated that the state eventually implement new benchmarks\u2014subject to a 10-point comparison to make sure they didn\u2019t even resemble Common Core.<\/p>\n Fallin had not indicated whether she would sign the legislation, and activists descended en masse to persuade her. One group of opponents besieged the Capitol wearing green T-shirts reading common core is not ok. National organizations swamped Fallin\u2019s office with thousands of calls urging her to sign the repeal. School administrators and teachers, meanwhile, warned of educational chaos; they had already prepared classroom plans for the fall aligned to Common Core. Business groups urged a veto. Tillerson, in Oklahoma City to deliver a speech at an energy conference, urged Oklahoma not to retreat from its \u201cprior commitment\u201d to \u201chigh and meaningful standards.\u201d<\/p>\n In the end, Fallin sided with Common Core\u2019s opponents. On June 5, 2014, she signed the new legislation, citing the \u201cwidespread concerns\u201d that Common Core \u201cgives up local control of Oklahoma\u2019s public schools\u201d\u2014the very concerns she\u2019d previously dismissed.<\/p>\n It was about this time that Tillerson\u2019s company adopted a new policy for its corporate political action committee. ExxonMobil PAC would make no more donations to elected officials actively opposed to Common Core, even those who typically back the company\u2019s principal business interests.<\/p>\n Among the first to be affected: Oklahoma Gov. Fallin. Her campaign committee had received a combined $6,000 in annual donations from ExxonMobil PAC in 2011, 2012, and 2013. In 2014, as she campaigned for reelection, ExxonMobil PAC gave her nothing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even before the defeat in Oklahoma, Common Core\u2019s supporters had begun to recognize that they had to step up their defense\u2014and do so in a more localized way. The real fight was occurring in individual states considering repeal. The proponents unrolled a \u201cground game,\u201d helping launch state advocacy groups with full-time staff and websites, featuring testimonials from local teachers and business leaders supporting Common Core.<\/p>\n Recognizing the need for conservative political and PR savvy, Common Core backers turned to a new nonprofit they\u2019d established, called the Collaborative for Student Success, to \u201censure fact-based discussion.\u201d (The group\u2019s funding includes $27.9 million from the Gates Foundation, as well as grants from the ExxonMobil Foundation.) To run it, leaders of eight big foundations hired Karen Nussle, a former Newt Gingrich aide who had become a Washington PR and marketing operative. Nussle assumed the role of \u201cconservative whisperer.\u201d She established a rapid-response operation, to spin news about Common Core and respond fiercely to opponents\u2019 charges.<\/p>\n She also retained William Bennett, one of the fathers of Common Core, as an advisor. In ads and media interviews aimed at calming the right, Bennett bashed the Obama administration for meddling (\u201cThat messed up everything,\u201d he tells\u00a0Fortune), but defended the standards as \u201cstill excellent\u201d and a \u201cconservative idea.\u201d America, he told theManchester Union Leader,\u00a0needed to adopt \u201creal standards\u201d across the country \u201cso we can stop being the dumb asses of the industrial world.\u201d Nussle says Bennett, now an author and radio talk-show host, makes an ideal advocate because he is \u201cunassailable as a hard-core conservative.\u201d (Still, assail him they have. The conservative blog RedState.com put it this way: \u201cBill Bennett paid to pimp for Common Core.\u201d)<\/p>\n A few business leaders stepped up their efforts too. State Farm helped fund Biz4Readiness, a smartphone app developed by the Committee for Economic Development, as a sort of electronic cheat sheet for CEOs to use in promoting the standards. It included statistics, talking points, videos, and rebuttals to \u201ccommon myths\u201d about Common Core. In 2014 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable bankrolled a two-month round of ads. They aired on Fox News rather than during a golf tournament.<\/p>\n A fourth-grader in San Pablo, Calif. explains his solution to a math problem for his classmates in 2013. Math teachers are changing the way they deliver lessons to students to adapt to new Common Core curriculum standards.Photo: Kristopher Skinner\u2014TNS\/Zumapress.com<\/p>\n The anger against Common Core remained fierce, with politicians facing intense pressure. And yet most state education officials and many teachers continued to view the substance of the standards as extremely valuable. In the face of these opposing positions, an almost-too-easy third way began to emerge.<\/p>\n Instead of dropping out, 27 states simply renamed their education standards. In most cases they tweaked some of the provisions while retaining the vast majority. In Florida, for example, the dreaded Common Core was dead! Long live\u2009\u2026\u2009the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards!<\/p>\n This provided political cover for Republicans. For their part, supporters of Common Core concluded they had no need to fight such initiatives. (The advocates note that any serious standards will necessarily share many elements with Common Core. Says Rich McKeon, head of the education program at the Helmsley Charitable Trust, a philanthropy that has given millions to support the standards: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get rid of Common Core completely unless we don\u2019t want kids to do a lot of math and writing and deep analytical thinking.\u201d)<\/p>\n The moves lowered the temperature in the fight, and by 2015 the repeal forces seemed to be losing momentum. The battle of Arizona may have been the turning point. The state\u2019s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, took office in January 2015 after campaigning against Common Core. Tea Party\u2013backed legislators promptly prepared a bill to dump the standards, which had been embraced under Ducey\u2019s GOP predecessor, Jan Brewer.<\/p>\n Opponents took aim at both the standards and their supporters, including former Intel CEO Barrett. Once again the accusations were wild. A Republican, Barrett had retired to Arizona and served as an education adviser to Brewer. A group called Arizonans Against Common Core declared that Barrett \u201chas UN ties!\u201d and advised that \u201cCommon Core Science Standards\u201d\u2014actually, there are none, since Common Core doesn\u2019t deal with science\u2014\u201cTeach Global Warming!\u201d The repeal bill passed the Arizona house and went to the senate, where Republicans had a big majority.<\/p>\n This time, though, the business community had seemingly learned how to tangle with the organized opposition. The Arizona chamber of commerce\u2014and Barrett\u2014fought back hard. The chamber lobbied furiously, senator by senator, arguing that the state, which had been struggling for years to improve its poor-performing school system, needed the standards to attract jobs. They made the same case to Ducey, a former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery. Soon after, the governor publicly stated that getting rid of the Common Core standards wasn\u2019t \u201cnecessary\u201d after all. A week later, the Arizona senate voted 16\u201313 to preserve the standards.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The adversaries of Common Core have no intention of capitulating. In 16 states, it now faces various implementation \u201creviews.\u201d The clock ran out in 2015 without any more states dropping out. But in 2016, legislative assaults will undoubtedly resume.<\/p>\n That said, Common Core has become a reality. Like Obamacare, it\u2019s reviled in many quarters. Yet it\u2019s increasingly impractical to undo. Countless schools have established curriculums designed around the standards, retrained teachers, and bought new books and materials. Reversing course would require redoing all of that again. Today, 42 states remain officially committed to the Common Core (under whatever name), while South Carolina, Indiana, and Alaska have standards of their own that experts say closely resemble Common Core. After decades of controversy and conflict, a single set of thoughtful, higher standards is shaping the education of most American schoolchildren. (Exxon Mobil is confident enough of the standards\u2019 staying power that it has rescinded its policy of withholding campaign contributions to opponents of Common Core.)<\/p>\n It remains unclear how well this grand experiment will meet its ultimate goal: better preparing kids (and our country) for a challenging future. A key element of the Common Core effort\u2014common standardized tests to allow honest assessments of progress\u2014remains unfulfilled, swept back by a wave of parental concern about over-testing and teacher anxiety about being judged too harshly too soon. (Indeed, even the Gates Foundation\u2014a staunch advocate of testing accountability\u2014has urged a two-year moratorium on using new Common Core exams for teacher evaluations or student promotions, citing the need to give everyone time to adjust.)<\/p>\n Of 43 states initially enrolled in one of the two consortia established to develop new Common Core tests, only about half remain. Dropout states, which must use their own tests, have cited teacher and parent concerns, as well as unhappiness with the new exams and their cost. But for states unwilling to repeal the standards, abandoning the tests has also become a way to assert local control\u2014and appease anger about the Common Core.<\/p>\n The first states started using the new tests this year, producing refreshingly honest\u2014if predictably dismal\u2014results on student proficiency. As education experts see it, it will take several years to assess how successfully the combination of standards and \u201caligned\u201d tests can drive improvements in the classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re better off than we were before Common Core,\u201d says veteran education scholar Chester Finn, a senior fellow with Stanford\u2019s Hoover Institution. \u201cWe\u2019ve got better standards. There\u2019s less lying about the performance of kids and schools. There\u2019s some better curriculum in place. If you were hoping for a 100% gain, today we\u2019re probably looking at a 37% gain. But honestly it\u2019s still early days. The aircraft carrier of an education system turns really slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n GE\u2019s Retreat<\/p>\n General Electric was a leading supporter of Common Core\u2014until it began facing political pressure over the initiative.<\/p>\n Photograph by Sam Kaplan<\/p>\n Initially, no company supported the Common Core standards more enthusiastically than General Electric. In February 2012 the company\u2019s charitable foundation announced an $18 million grant\u2014\u201cthe largest corporate commitment to date for the Common Core,\u201d its press release noted\u2014to help states transition to the new standards. That August, GE gave another $7 million to Achieve Inc. to aid Common Core\u2019s implementation.<\/p>\n GE, which has been active in education philanthropy for decades, didn\u2019t just write checks. Led by foundation president Bob Corcoran, a 34-year GE veteran, it evangelized for Common Core. For three years the foundation convened an annual Business and Education Summit focused heavily on Common Core. The 2012 event was dedicated to developing a \u201cunified business effort\u201d backing the standards.<\/p>\n The foundation simultaneously held a separate weeklong conference for educators at the same location, dedicating most of the agenda to Common Core. GE Foundation education director Kelli Wells opened the 2011 event, according to a video posted by an attendee, by declaring, \u201cWe\u2019re going to be focusing on the Common Core so much that you\u2019re going to be eating and drinking and dreaming about the Common Core.\u201d<\/p>\n The GE Foundation website asserted that \u201cthe future health of business depends on this historic initiative.\u201d It urged executives to promote Common Core with state officials, give speeches, \u201cengage the media,\u201d and \u201ckeep pressure on school boards.\u201d GE recruited 73 executives\u2014including the CEOs of Alcoa, Boeing\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>BA<\/a>\u00a0-2.27%\u00a0, and State Farm\u2014to sign an open letter backing Common Core, which was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times in February 2013.<\/p>\n GE also urged companies to remain resolute in the face of the political storm that the reforms were sure to generate, noting, \u201cThe business community can be the spine of stability in a changing environment, helping others stay the course too.\u201d<\/p>\n As it turned out, GE didn\u2019t maintain its own \u201cspine of stability.\u201d In 2013 the Tea Party, which was already accusing GE of \u201ccrony capitalism\u201d for backing the Export-Import Bank, began attacking the company on Common Core. That April, protesters from FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group, picketed GE\u2019s annual shareholders meeting at the New Orleans Convention Center. They carried signs reading\u00a0GE LEAVE EDUCATION ALONE!\u00a0and\u00a0GENERAL ELECTRIC STAY OUT OF MY CHILD\u2019S EDUCATION.<\/p>\n In July 2013 the GE Foundation devoted a conference to Common Core for the last time. That October, Corcoran retired as head of the foundation, replaced by GE\u2019s chief diversity officer, Deborah Elam. With that, GE would stop making new grants and advocating Common Core. Says the Business Roundtable\u2019s Dane Linn: \u201cThey stopped funding anything Common Core related.\u201d<\/p>\n Wells, who remains director of GE\u2019s U.S. education philanthropy, insists the foundation \u201cnever took a stance on Common Core, in the sense of the yes-or-no piece of it.\u201d She says GE merely gave money to help educators required to teach to the standards. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t something where the foundation was saying it\u2019s right or wrong,\u201d says Wells. \u201cBoth sides had valid points and positions.\u201d While denying any \u201cretreat,\u201d Wells acknowledged that the growing controversy made GE uncomfortable. \u201cThat was not something we wanted to be involved with.\u201d<\/p>\n Corcoran says he left GE of his own accord. Unaware of the capitulation until\u00a0Fortuneinformed him of it, he says the GE Foundation was \u201cabsolutely totally committed\u201d to backing Common Core during his tenure, calling it \u201csome of the best work the foundation has ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n Adds Corcoran: \u201cIf GE has moved away from that investment, it saddens me. If Common Core dies because it\u2019s been abandoned too early\u2014moving on to new investments while others tear it apart\u2014you won\u2019t see an effort to increase the quality of education systemically in this country for 20 more years.\u201d<\/p>\n A version of this article appears in the January 1, 2016 issue of Fortune.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Common Core\u00a0 Business gets Schooled\u00a0\u00a0 By Peter Elkind Photograph by Sam Kaplan for Fortune; Styling by Brian Byrne When Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, and others pushed for the education standards, they incurred the wrath of Tea Party conservatives and got a painful lesson in modern politics. In February 2014, two of the world\u2019s richest men, … Continue reading Common Core Business gets Schooled By Peter Elkind<\/span> \n