On several fronts, key business, education and political interests have heightened their push for the changes. Although opposition remains strong, pro-Common Core groups sense that a tipping point may be approaching. Rather than taking victory for granted, they are mobilizing, using overlapping strategies centered on the so-called “Smarter Balanced” assessments.

The computer-based tests, used to appraise students’ mastery of Common Core, are already receiving mixed reviews at best. As the Orange County Register reports, students have experienced the kinds of tech glitches that are familiar to Americans from the checkout aisle to Obamacare signups — frozen screens, no sound, slow clicks and password resets. Administrators have additional challenges on their mind. Amy Kernan, a vice principal interviewed by the Register, expressed concern that the “hallmark” adaptive testing portion of Smarter Balanced has yet to be pilot tested itself.

Federal pressure to meet deadline

Thanks to U.S. Department of Education demands, California has just one year to test out the exams. (Scores won’t be issued this year.) Remarkably, California is one of several states singled out by the DOE for punishment if it fails to meet the Smarter Balanced deadline. Despite widespread enthusiasm among California lawmakers for Common Core, legislators in 2013 passed a bill designed to suspend nearly all statewide student testing for one year — the better to prepare for Smarter Balanced implementation.

Signed into law in September by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Bill 484 provoked the swift ire of DOE officials. As activists objected that the bill would create a “black hole of information,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that California would lose up to $15 million or more in federal education funding for the move. Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, sent a sternly worded letter to Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, and Mike Kirst, president of the state Board of Education. “By failing to administer a reading/language arts and mathematics assessment to all students in the tested grades,” she wrote, “California would be unable to provide this important information to students, principals, teachers and parents.”

A scramble for funding

Last spring, Brown also authorized one and a quarter billion dollars of state-funded Common Core funds, to be distributed proportionally to each school district in California. In an effort to hang onto federal dollars, Sacramento officials resolved to proceed with Smarter Balanced testing only, speeding up the timetable for distributing the $1.25 billion.

What they didn’t anticipate was confusion over how that money would be spent. California school districts vary widely in their level of education technology and technical support. According to the Hechinger Report, some districts have already spent all of their share of the grant, while others have spent only a third — leading Brown to pledge this May an additional one-time sum of $26.7 million to grease the wheels for Smarter Balanced.

Public relations push

With so much uncertainty surrounding the cost of merely being able to administer the Smarter Balanced exams, Common Core supporters have issued a fresh statement touting the embattled agenda. Some 300 groups and individuals have signed a joint statement, sent to Gov. Brown and others, justifying the Smarter Balanced ordeal as a necessary step in the march toward fulfilling Common Core advocates’ promises.

At least one activist expressed clear concern that Smarter Balanced posed a significant threat to favorable public and educator opinion surrounding Common Core. Debra Brown, associate director of education policy for Children Now, expressed “trepidation” over the likelihood of unfavorable “knee-jerk reactions” toward the testing process.

The public relations effort follows on the heels of a February letter sent to state education officials by Common Core opponents. Californians United Against Common Core pegged the estimated cost of assessing Common Core at over $1 billion.

The starkest evidence that the union-first status quo remained entrenched in the Legislature came with the ramming through of the wish list of the most powerful forces in the state. I have an editorial in Sunday’s U-T San Diego laying out the sick picture and pointing to the CTA’s and the CFT’s key collaborator:

Protecting perverted teachers  …

“The top priority for California’s public schools in California should be helping students. Instead, priority No. 1 is protecting teachers from accountability … .

“This was on display with an alleged teacher discipline measure prompted by the horrifying case of Mark Berndt, a veteran Los Angeles Unified elementary-school teacher who delighted in feeding semen to his students. The school district paid Berndt $40,000 to resign in 2011 after determining that job protections demanded and won by United Teachers Los Angeles were so imposing that he couldn’t simply be fired.

“In 2012, an Assembly committee blocked a bill that would have streamlined the discipline process and allowed for decisive action in cases like Berndt’s. This triggered considerable political fallout that led to one Assembly member’s defeat. And so in 2013, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers ordered their puppets to adopt AB 375 — a fake reform that in some cases actually gives teachers even more job protections. The measure is on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk, where it should die.

“But don’t count on that. The allegedly independent, tough-minded Brown is the closest ally the CTA and CFT have ever had in the governor’s office.”

… and incompetent teachers, too

“Which brings us to AB 484, which should get at least as much attention as AB 375. This bill, also on Brown’s desk, would broadly suspend much federally mandated testing of students for at least a year and also block the release of test scores in some other circumstances. This has prompted sharp criticism from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, including a threat to withhold federal education funds, because test scores are essential to evaluating student progress.

“The nominal reason for this extraordinary legislation? State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson says it would help schools to focus on a new testing regimen with different learning goals, called the Common Core standards.

“The real reason, however, is much more basic. On June 12, 2012, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant held that Los Angeles Unified — and, by implication, every California school district — could no longer ignore a 1971 state law that required that student performance be part of teacher evaluations.

“How do you keep the Chalfant ruling from inconveniencing teachers? You block student testing. If you can’t measure student performance, you can’t ding teachers.”

The CA cold war over education

But the unions aren’t the only parties to blame. There’s also our alleged genius leader, Msgr. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

“And what is the governor’s idea of school ‘reform”’? Returning more authority to the local level. Our allegedly worldly, brilliant governor somehow is ignorant of the fact that local control used to be the status quo — and it was an enormous failure. ‘If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war,’ declared the 1983 ‘Nation at Risk’ federal report that triggered the education reform movement.

“Thirty years later, at least in California, a cold war over education persists. But as AB 375 and AB 484 show, it’s not much of a war. The teachers unions are winning in a rout — and their arrogance has hit such extremes that they’re even willing to use their clout to protect classroom sexual predators.

“Congratulations, CTA. Congra-tulations, CFT.

“And congratulations, governor. Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

At least Katrina came and went. The CTA and CFT are like a perma-storm hanging over the Golden State’s classrooms. That their enabler is a guy who’s routinely billed as the sharpest guy in the room? What an indictment of CA’s media.