This is an article I wrote for CNN.com, explaining why there is strong parent resistance to Common Core testing.

The pushback is not so much against the standards as against the decision to make the tests so “hard” and set the passing mark so unrealistically high, that most students failed.

In a democracy, public officials have to remember that they were not hired to impose their dogmas on everyone and that government functions best when it has the consent of the governed.

The most important lesson to be learned from the growing backlash is the importance of critical thinking. Right now, public officials defend the CCSS by calling critics names and trying to discredit them as extremists and ideologues.

Why not listen, engage in honest dialogue, and demonstrate a willingness to think critically and reflect on the objections, rather than smearing those who ask questions?

One of my intellectual heroes was Robert Hutchins, for years the president of the University of Chicago. He once said, and I paraphrase, never stop listening to your critics; they may be right.

For many years, Frank Bruni was a wonderful restaurant reviewer for the New York Times. But now he is a regular opinion writer for the New York Times, and when he writes about education, he is way over his head. He was one of the few to write sympathetically about the corporate reform turkey “Won’t Back Down,” which opened in 2,500 theaters to bad reviews and disappeared a month later.

His latest effort was a strident defense of the Common Core standards and tests, in which he made fun of the parents who spoke out against the overuse and misuse of standardized testing. His thesis was that American kids are “too coddled.”

Surely, he was not referring to the majority of public school students in the south and the west who–according to the Southern Education Fund–live in poverty. Are they coddled?

Does he know that in New York State, only 3% of English learners passed the tests; only 5% of students with disabilities; only 15-18% of black and Hispanic students? What will we do with these students if large numbers fail these “rigorous” tests in the future? Surely they won’t be coddled.

His purpose is to show solidarity with the Common Core standards and tests, although he doesn’t seem to know how they were developed, why they were adopted, or why their advocates feel certain they will produce good results.

He disparages their critics as extremists, echoing Arne Duncan:

“The Common Core, a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization, has been adopted in more than 40 states. In instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate.

“What’s not warranted is the welling hysteria: from right-wing alarmists, who hallucinate a federal takeover of education and the indoctrination of a next generation of government-loving liberals; from left-wing paranoiacs, who imagine some conspiracy to ultimately privatize education and create a new frontier of profits for money-mad plutocrats.

“Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

“Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?”

Imagine thinking that the burst of thousands of privately managed charters and the spread of vouchers to 17 states in the past 20 years is worthy of concern? Nah, that’s leftwing paranoic thinking. Imagine wondering how strained school budgets can afford billions for new software and hardware, more bandwidth, more teacher evaluations based on tests, more tests, more test prep…..Nah, just more left-wing paranoic thinking.

Mercedes Schneider has identified 17 states where protests against Common Core standards are heating up, in some cases leading to a slowdown or cancellation of implementation.

She writes:

“Over one-third of the states whose governors and state superintendents signed the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding as part of US Department of Education Race to the Top (RTTT) funding are now percolating with CCSS misgivings.

“That is what happens with top-down reform. The “bottom”– those directly affected by the “top’s” decisions– eventually seethe.”

She provides a description of each state where CCSS is in trouble.

Jonathan Pelto has collected a long list of posts by bloggers around the nation, reacting to Duncan’s amazing statement that “white suburban moms” are opposed to Common Core because they were disappointed to discover that their child is not so brilliant after all.

This is one of those remarks that just does not fade away and can’t be explained away as a misquotation or taken out of context.

The meaning was all too clear.

Arne Duncan has a low opinion of American students and thinks their parents are pampering them, and to add to the insult, he thinks it is time they were all taken down a peg or two, along with the esteem in which parents hold their local community public schools.

As the World War I poster famously said, “Loose lips sink ships.”

This ship is a leaky rowboat.