General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Ted Cruz Makes Impassioned Plea For Repeal Of Federal Legislation That Does Not Exist [View all]knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)The Common Core isn't law, no, but Race to the Top, which forced states to implement the Common Core in a competition for more federal dollars is. In some cases, only two people in a state signed the paperwork to implement the CCSS (as we in education call it), and it wasn't exactly voluntarily. Michigan, for example, jumped through all the hoops and implemented the CCSS only to not get an extra dime from the feds.
The federal government actually did play a role in creating the standards (mostly through funding, but they were at the table and behind the scenes pushing it on the states before the standards were even done being written), and it required states to adopt them in order to get RTTT funding. Just because they put things on their website doesn't mean they're telling the truth.
Madfloridian here and Diane Ravitch have good resources on what this fiasco actually is, who funded it, and who's behind it all.