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A few pundits in some powerful think tanks have started rattling their sabers at the Common Core State Standards. They're raising fears of government takeover and federally-imposed mediocrity. I think their fears are unfounded.

Over at the Heritage Foundation blog, Jennifer Marshall recently joined the chorus of nay-sayers. Her claims about the Common Core don't really stand up to scrutiny:

• Claim #1: Parents already have the information they need to know how their children are doing. State tests "let parents know how well their children have mastered the curriculum," Marshall writes. And the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) should set them straight about the quality of their standards, she adds.

I don't agree. Many states have notoriously low standards. The best that NAEP can do, presuming anyone will pay attention to it, is let parents know that their children's scores aren't telling them anything at all. (And let's not forget that many foes of common standards have also been foes of NAEP.) So how do you create a groundswell of support for higher standards under these conditions?

• Claim #2: Common standards don't guarantee high performance. After all, most high-flying countries have national standards, but so do most laggards, Marshall points out. True, but that just proves that common standards aren't enough, not that they don't matter. Without strong support for excellent tests, curriculum, staff development, and a whole host of other tools, the best standards in the world won't do much good at all. But why choose to keep wandering in the wilderness of 50 different sets of state standards?

• Claim # 3: Common standards will guarantee mediocrity, Marshall predicts. Yes, there's a danger that, over time, all states could embrace the lowest common denominator. We have to create non-federal governance structures that keep that from happening. But early signs are good, aren't they? Both the Fordham and Core Knowledge Foundations gave the Common Core standards the thumbs up--and they're hardly the kinds of lefty, touchy-feely bleeding hearts who whip folks at the Heritage Foundation into a lather.

It's also important to remember that it's the states, not the federal government, that got the common standards ball rolling in the first place. The states that set about healing themselves don't seem ready to succumb to old habits.

If anything, I'm more concerned about some of the states that are withdrawing from the Common Core amidst loud claims that their current standards are better than anything else.

• Claim # 4: Common standards will erect a new barrier between parents and their children's schooling. Parents will not be "able to petition their local school boards or state leaders for changes in academic content," Marshall worries. Not true. Marshall, like so many other standards foes, has a distorted sense of what standards really are.

They are not curriculum. They are not lesson plans. Local communities can still have a great deal of say over what gets taught and how it gets taught. But let's face it, algebra is pretty much the same in Portland, Pomona and Paris.*

Resistance to the Common Core standards seems to go well beyond Marshall's reasonable though (in my view) misguided fears. Many of the comments on her blog posting offer full-blown conspiracy theories: The government wants to brainwash your kids! (With their rather tentative grasp on English grammar, some of the most rabid commenters unwittingly help make the case for common standards.)

But the fact remains: The states came together to create the Common Core standards on their own, long before the first tea partier ever cried "socialism!" We can't let our fears blind us to the dangers of accepting our current 50-state hodgepodge of academic goals.

* Edited to remove a bit of snark.