As many of you know, one of the more commonly challenged aspects of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is its reliance on states to set their own standards for academic proficiency, which has led to a "race to the bottom" where states can actually game the system by lowering standards instead of raising student achievement. This has led to the emergence of a rather strange set of political bedfellows across both aisles of the political spectrum who believe that the best way to resolve the problem is to move to some system of national standards more akin to what other developed nations have.

The devil, of course, is in the details. Who would write the standards? Who would enforce them? And would the role of the federal government become too expansive? Written in part by Mike Petrilli, a member of Our Education's National Advisory Panel, this report released by the Fordham Foundation does a terrific job of breaking down the debate over these questions and others - and I strongly encourage you to check it out.