In a move guaranteed heat up growing concerns about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts and mathematics – the ones Kentucky adopted sight unseen in 2010 – the Republican National Committee resolved yesterday to recognize the CCSS as:

“…an inappropriate over-reach to standardize and control the education of our children so they will conform to a preconceived “normal.”

Touching on an equally sensitive and interconnected subject, the same resolution says:

“…the Republican National Committee rejects the collection of personal student data for any non-educational purpose without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent and that it rejects the sharing of such personal data, without the prior written consent of an adult student or a child student’s parent, with any person or entity other than schools or education agencies within the state.”

I hasten to note that Common Core isn’t coming under fire just from the right. Noted liberal education historian Diane Ravitch, who is a teachers’ union darling and certainly no conservative, wrote only seven weeks ago:

“I have thought long and hard about the Common Core standards.

I have decided that I cannot support them.”

Part of Ravitch’s explanation for this decision includes:

“I have come to the conclusion that I can’t wait five or ten years to find out whether test scores go up or down, whether or not schools improve, and whether the kids now far behind are worse off than they are today.”

“I have come to the conclusion that the Common Core standards effort is fundamentally flawed by the process with which they have been foisted upon the nation.”

“There was minimal public engagement in the development of the Common Core. Their creation was neither grassroots nor did it emanate from the states.”

With the CCSS now under fire from both sides, things could get very interesting.