What does it mean when a governor signs an executive order that doesn't change anything anybody is actually doing, or will do?

The question has come up in Georgia, where Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, issued an order on May 15 "re-affirming state sovereignty in regards to education." The order begins by asserting that the federal government has "no constitutional right to determine how children in the State of Georgia will be educated," and goes on to say that education standards can't be imposed on the state by the federal government, and that all decisions about curriculum and instruction will be made at the local level.

The executive order ends with this statement: "That no personally identifiable data on students and/or their families' religion, political party affiliation, biometric information, psychometric data, and/or voting history shall be collected, tracked, housed, reported, or shared with the federal government."

This language is very clear. But it changes nothing about the way Georgia interacts with the federal government in terms of providing data, according to the state education department. It also changes nothing about the way the Peach State will deal with student data and Uncle Sam as far as the Common Core State Standards is concerned. (Common-core observers may be familiar that concerns about student privacy rights under the common core were among many reasons the Republican National Committee stated it was opposed to the new standards in a resolution it passed last month.)

When I rang up Dorie Nolt, a spokeswoman for the Georgia department, she said, "The executive order that Gov. Deal signed does not change anything we do or not do currently at the department of education. It simply reiterates our long-standing practice of protecting data, student-level data. We only send aggregate data files to the federal government, and any student data that we do track within the state is tracked by anonymous numbers."

So what is Deal, who one would assume has been told all of this, really doing here? In the words of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Deal is effectively trying to stop a "mutiny" against the common core in his home state. Georgia state Sen. William Ligon, a Republican who introduced a bill this year requiring the state to drop the common core but saw it get squashed, was in attendance when Deal when he signed the executive order, and Ligon subsequently called it a "good first step."

But Deal, a common core supporter, doesn't want to take the next step Ligon wants from the state, which is to pull out of the common core entirely. That means the anti-common-core pot will likely continue to fizz and bubble in the state, especially since tea party groups have picked up the issue and are opposing the common core.

By the way, the state GOP convention in Georgia is taking place this weekend, which may help to explain the timing of Deal's executive order. And Deal is up for re-election next year, so in appealing to his party's base in the state, he'll have to display a deft but forceful political touch if he wants to keep the common core around.

"I think the governor was correct in pointing out there is a difference between standards and curriculum. I don't think a lot of people understand that. There's also a difference between curriculum and resources. The standards are ... very broad, overarching things that we think students should know and be able to do," the state superintendent, John Barge, a Republican, said at a press conference May 15 in reaction to Deal's executive order.

Barge is also up for re-election in 2014, and he's dealing with political pressure over student privacy, too. The state is a "Phase 2" partner with inBloom, a nonprofit group that says it uses student data to help teachers deliver personalized learning to students using up-to-date classroom technology. "Phase 2" means that the state shares digital resources with inBloom, but not any student data ("Phase 1" states and districts share student data with the group). But the group has come under fire in Louisiana and elsewhere over concerns that it could potentially share student data inappropriately with private education-technology vendors, something the group says it will not do.

On this point, Deal's executive order also reads: "That no student data shall be collected for the purpose of the development of commercial products or services."

Barge has recently clarified the state's refusal to share student data with inBloom, although he also said he's heard that individual districts in Georgia have been asked to share that data by inBloom.

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Reports that Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis is headed out the door appear to have been on the mark, as Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, announced today that he will nominate William Harner, the superintendent of the Cumberland Valley School District, to replace Tomalis, the Associated Press reports. If confirmed by the state Senate, Harner would officially take over on June 1. Tomalis, meanwhile, apparently will move into an advisory role in Corbett's administration, so he isn't leaving the ship entirely.

A former Army officer, Harner has broad experience in education. He previously worked as a school administrator in Georgia, South Carolina, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, and he said that he grew up going to school in a district outside the City of Brotherly Love. Mr. Harner also attended the Superintendents Academy at the Broad Foundation in 2005 as a fellow, according to his biography at the Cumberland district and the foundation.

"In this role I'm going to do my best to make sure every district is a great district," Harner said on May 15.

Corbett said that Harner, 56, would be an effective problem-solver, but didn't flesh out the reason for the change.

"Those who have worked with him describe Dr. Harner as an accomplished student, born manager, and decisive leader who can carry out our agenda of educational
excellence in the face of any challenge," Corbett said in a statement.

Tomalis recently has defended the state's adoption of the Common Core State Standards. In the last year or so, he has also criticized both No Child Left Behind Act waivers for districts, and Race to the Top grants for districts. And he has had to preside over difficult budget circumstances in his own state, with Corbett cutting K-12 by $900 million two years ago.

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For some time, California's budget woes brought to mind a jalopy barely coughing along on a quarter-tank of highly dubious grain alcohol. But thanks to the passage of Proposition 30 last year that lead to broad tax increases earmarked largely for K-12, the prospects have improved, at least from a revenue perspective. And Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, pledged not long after the measure's passage that he would actually simplify things, while also providing a bigger share of funding to districts with the highest proportion of English-language learners and low-income students. In addition, revenues from personal income taxes this year are also ahead of projections, further helping the budget outlook.

The newest budget plan from Brown includes $1 billion in additional spending on K-12 from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014, thanks to the infusion of Proposition 30 money that helps the fiscal 2013 budget in mid-stream to the tune of $2.9 billion, although the minimum guarantee for state K-12 aid is projected to drop from that level for fiscal 2014.

The Associated Press has examined how Brown's plan for K-12 breaks down. Total education spending would increase by $1,046 per student, and the base per-student funding level is $7,895 in the governor's 2013-14 budget plan. But the real controversy comes with Brown's weighted-funding formula. As part of his initiative to streamline the state's education-funding system, Brown wants to ensure that districts with a higher share of ELLs, low-income students, and students in foster care get a greater share of money. That would mean $1.9 billion in education spending specifically directed at those students under the new formula, or about 4 cents more out of every education dollar. Those numbers, by the way, were released on May 14, and are a revised version of the initial budget plan Brown released in January. Lawmakers have to pass a spending plan by June 15.

In Brown's new budget plan, there's a breakdown of how exactly the money would flow to districts through the new Local Control Funding Formula. (You'll find the breakdown on page 16 at the link.) In addition to the base grant per student, each district would receive a supplemental grant, based on the percentage of ELL, low-income, and foster children. But districts with a share of those students that tops 50 percent would get an extra boost in education spending through a second formula.

In the example used, a hypothetical California district with 41.9 percent of ELL, low-income, and foster students would have a final per-pupil spending amount of $9,053, while a district consisting entirely of students who fall into those categories would have $12,040 available per student. In an initial review of the January version of this formula, the California Legislative Analyst's Office pointed out that nothing in Brown's plan mandates that the supplemental cash actually go to supplemental services for the targeted students. Brown has reportedly tightened accountability for the supplemental money to try to ensure that it gets spent on the students in question.

Brown's plan also includes $1 billion in funding to implement the Common Core State Standards that districts can spend over the next two years. As John Fensterwald at EdSource notes, the chairmen of the Assembly and Senate education committees lobbied Brown to earmark funds for phasing in the new standards.

It's also worth pointing out that while Brown's budget plan includes an increase in K-12 spending, he said he was taking a cautious approach to spending in other respects, and his revised plan for all spending is $1.2 billion less than the one he put forward in January.

But as AP notes, legislators aren't entirely satisfied with what Brown has put out. As you might imagine, the feeling from some relatively wealthy (or at least middle-class) districts is that the formula won't be particularly fair to them. "The local control funding formula is an interesting problem because it's not really a partisan issue. It's more of a geographic issue," Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, a Republican who serves as vice chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, told the AP. And whether by coincidence or not, the government affairs director for the Chamber of Commerce in Gorell's district in Camarillo, Sean Paroski, also tweeted this on May 14: "W/new formula, $1 of $5 will go to English-learner or low-income students. What do suburban schools think of Prop 30 support now?"

Prominent Democrats, like Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, also say they have reservations about how Brown's plan would work, even if they like the general idea, as Fensterwald points out. So Brown has multiple fights on his hands as he presses forward with his plan, and indeed he appears to be approaching them pugilistically, saying that foes of his budget will be in for "the battle of their lives."

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Upset about what they see as the "sham" the Common Core State Standards will become without adequate funding to support it, a group of Pennsylvania Democratic state senators are claiming that the new standards will only bring misery, in the form of greatly damaged graduation rates, if major changes aren't made.

The claims were made in a May 13 press release by six Pennsylvania Democrats, including the ranking Democrat on the the Senate Education Committee, as well as the top Democrat in the Senate (which is controlled by the GOP). The lawmakers also claim that the common core has "no legislative oversight" and demand a full legislative review of what the standards are and what the state education department will expect under the standards. In the first line of their statement, they make a partisan play by calling the standards a $300 million "unfunded education mandate" for districts that is being "quietly pursued by the Corbett administration," a reference to GOP Gov. Tom Corbett. They note that Corbett's decision to slash $900 million two years ago from the state's K-12 budget has only made matters worse.

In addition, the senators say the testing regime under the common core will be "particularly devastating to fiscally challenged schools," and claim that the new assessments will suck time out of traditional instruction.

"We are not opposed to the implementation of common core standards for Pennsylvania's students," said Sen. Andrew Dinniman, the party's top member on the education committee. "But we are opposed to common core standards without adequate state financial resources for our schools so that all of our students have the opportunity to succeed under those standards, including those in financially distressed school districts."

This kind of attack on the standards, in the cosmos of common core concerns, is relatively unusual, and it comes from Democrats to boot. There's a certain echo here of what American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in a speech last month. Weingarten said she was concerned about the lack of support and professional development teachers have been receiving as they transition to the common core. (This anxiety led her to call for a moratorium on attaching high stakes to the common-core assessments.) She also criticized the Obama administration for providing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the tests, but none specifically for professional development geared to the standards.

The Pennsylvania senators get more specific about the potential costs, and voice the additional concern about the standards' impacts on students and their ability to graduate. They also enter into more abstract, potentially more politically loaded territory when they say state legislators lack all the information they need about the common core.

On what they say is a related issue, one of the legislators, Sen. Jim Brewster, has introduced a bill (Senate Bill 823) that would require a new state commission to either significantly change or scrap Pennsylvania's student testing procedures. The state testing system has come under a cloud recently during a cheating investigation.

Estimates about common core's implementation costs vary. One study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (which support the common core) pegged the dollar amount in Pennsylvania at $128 million for a "bare bones" version, $220 million for a "balanced" approach, and $543 million with a "business as usual" approach to education spending in the state. But the anti-common-core Pioneer Institute estimates $250 million in costs for Pennsylvania for professional development alone.

It's also worth noting that Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis, a common core supporter, is apparently leaving his position. "I'm confident we are going forward with the implementation of Pennsylvania Common Core Standards," he told The Patriot-News, also on May 13.

The senators make clear that they are not opposed the standards themselves. But they clearly have serious concerns about common core's status quo in the state, and their opposition as elected Democrats is certainly worth marking down.

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When I wrote about the death of an anti-common-core bill in Alabama last month, I noted that at least a few critics of the standards had linked them to "facial recognition" technology they said the U.S. government would use to read students' minds and pry into their eating habits at home. (Some commenters on the blog post noted that general concerns about invasions of student privacy under the common standards are not really misplaced.) But at the time, I didn't get into where exactly some critics were making the link between reading students' facial expressions and the common core.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch spells out the link between the potentially unsettling technology and the common core. Elisa Crouch wrote yesterday about a Missouri Senate bill that would require public hearings and a study of the common core, conducted and produced (respectively) by the state education department. What critics are referencing is a draft report from the U.S. Department of Education titled "Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century" and dated February of this year. The report focuses on "noncognitive factors" and how they play a role in student success.

To cut to the chase, references to the possible uses and benefits of reading facial expressions can be found on page 41, when it deals with "affective computing," which deals with reading heart rate variability, brain wave patterns, and eye-tracking, in addition to facial expressions, and on page 44, when it deals with something call the Media Lab Mood Meter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This Mood Meter captures facial expressions and "extracts geometric properties on faces (like distance between corner lips and eyes) to produce a smile intensity score." While this device may not be useful for small classes, the report notes, it could be useful in learning environments such as field trips where students go to museums.

And for those looking to fling a little more fuel on the political fire, in the "Acknowledgments" section, the report's authors thank Ash Vasudeva, a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has been criticized as a major force behind the standards.

Here's the kicker, however. As Crouch notes, U.S. department spokesman Daren Briscoe asserts that there is no connection between the common core and this report. The report does mention the Common Core State Standards twice, in relation to the persistence students need to grasp the math standards. And "content standards" are also mentioned twice, noting that teachers must cover a large number of them with students and that short lesson plans can be "densely packed" with content standards. But the report makes no clear link between the common core and the actual use of any facial recognition technology, whether it involves a "smile meter" or anything else.

In addition, the report states that such "micro-level indicators" to gauge student interest and engagement can be "intrusive or impractical for use in school settings."

But conservative bloggers, most prominently Michelle Malkin, have brought up "creepy student monitoring techniques" including facial recognition as one more reason to oppose the standards. As a rhetorical matter, for those who assume the federal government is behind both the common core and the potential introduction of facial recognition technology into classrooms, arguing that the two are connected isn't a big stretch. But of course, many people and groups who support the standards and say they were a state-led initiative won't grant their opponents the initial assumption about the federal government's role in the common core.

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The political battle over the Common Core State Standards is heating up, both at the state level and in broader debates at the national level, and at least some supporters of the standards appear to be taking notice that the ride may get very bumpy, at least politically. One supporter who summed up such fears was Andrew Rotherham, the co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a K-12 consulting firm. He said that common-core advocates who issued simple dismissals of concerns or criticisms about the standards' path ahead were exhibiting a disconcerting "view from the Green Zone." This is a reference to the international zone in Baghdad that was the heart of the American presence in Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003, and it's not a flattering one.

Opponents of the common core are smelling blood in the water and are trying various methods to diversify their portfolio of attacks. On May 2, several anti-common-core groups and individuals held a "Twitter rally" to #stopcommoncore, and afterwards provided an analysis of anti-common-core tweets from the rally. The stats, provided to me by Jamie Gass of the Pioneer Institute, showed that the rally produced 14,970 uses of the #stopcommoncore hashtag during the rally, which reached a peak at about 9 p.m. The analysis claimed that it had a "spread" of nearly 9.8 million Twitter accounts, referencing the number of accounts that "follow" those who tweeted or re-tweeted the hashtag.

While having nearly 15,000 uses of the hashtag itself in just a few hours is remarkable, it's questionable whether all or even most of the users of the nearly 9.8 million Twitter accounts actually saw the reference to #stopcommoncore, unless all the users of these accounts happened to be in front of their computers or staring at their smartphones during the rally, or scrolled back through their Twitter feeds later.

In addition, some of the hashtag's users may not have been particularly sympathetic to #stopcommoncore proponents—one user was Chris Minnich, the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which helped develop and promote the standards. Not surprisingly, he defended the standards in his tweet. Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist and very prominent foe of the standards, was the #stopcommoncore tweeter with the biggest "reach" (who at the time had about 513,000 followers), but also on the list of most prominent Twitter accounts in the analysis was @LOLGOP, which is not really sympathetic to common-core opponents.

"It was a decentralized, grassroots effort in which Pioneer was a major player, but not the only prime mover. In some respects, the Twitter rally was reflective of the anti-common-core movement itself," Gass wrote to me in an email.

The idea of a "grassroots" uprising that Gass mentions could be a fundamental problem for supporters. While common core has a lot of heavy muscle behind it, officials and business leaders must tread carefully, given how politicized the issue has become, Frederick M. Hess, an education scholar at the free-market-oriented American Enterprise Institute, told me. He also writes an opinion blog for edweek.org.

"The more that these elites try to step up and really make the case and support it, the more they risk creating the sense that this is being done to states and to educators and families," he said.

On the other side of the coin, there's also the question of whether opponents of the common core from different ends of the political spectrum can ever "bend" the spectrum sufficiently inwards to eventually unite. When I talked to Shaun Johnson, an administrator with United Opt Out, which opposes the common core from a progressive perspective, he spoke about the difficulties of opposing the standards from that standpoint. While he said that right-wing opponents of the common core have an admirable public-relations apparatus and energy, they frequently spread misinformation about the standards, and some of them toss in typical liberal "boogeymen" when denouncing the common core, he said, such as when they link the standards to Bill Ayers and multiculturalism.

These conservatives, he said, are not fundamentally open to embracing arguments from groups like his, such as United Opt Out's position that there is a disturbing emphasis on profits that also damages the common core's integrity.

"The very far right-wing side is definitely drowning out some of the progressive critiques," he said.

The trick for progressive opponents, Johnson argued, is to show more politically moderate people that the kind of efforts supporting the common core are also damaging schools and destroying funding for basic everyday K-12 needs that parents in particular believe are important.

But more progressive elements can take heart in actual news events recently, specifically the reports from several states about glitches in online testing that will be crucial to common-core assessmenets, such as in Indiana, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, argued Susan Ohanian, another progressive common-core critic.

"If they can't handle Indiana, how are they going to handle the whole country?" she wondered.

She also rejected the pro-common-core argument that people on the left side of the political spectrum should reconsider their opposition to the standards, given how some of their fellow common-core critics on the right side of the aisle hold other political views that left-wingers find repellent. "I hold hands with a lot of conservatives," she said.

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Jason Glass, Iowa's director of education, could be on the move, with the Associated Press reporting that Eagle County Schools in Colorado has listed Glass one of three finalists for its open superintendent's position. The district posted Glass as one of the finalists on May 9.

Given Glass' resume, the news is entirely surprising. He previously held two different jobs with the Eagle County district, director of human resources and director of research and assessment, and before that he worked on the Colorado Department of Education. He took over the top K-12 job in Iowa in late 2010. His resume indicates he worked in the district for just over three years. The district has about 6,200 students.

Eagle County states it started with 24 "highly qualified" applicants before winnowing the pool to three. The other candidates are a superintendent in a Wisconsin district, and an assistant superintendent in another Colorado district. By dint of his position alone, Glass appears to be the favorite, but of course nothing's been finalized and many other factors could come into play. He could even be offered the job but eventually refuse it.

When he came to Iowa after being appointed by Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, Glass took on an ambitious agenda that delighted some seeking major K-12 policy overhauls in the state but upset others suspicious of some of his proposed major changes. As I wrote about last year, for example, he pushed unsuccessfully to require all high school juniors to take a college entrance exam, and to require 3rd graders to demonstrate reading proficiency or else repeat the grade. But he had success elsewhere, such as a law passed last year allowing schools to grant competency-based degrees. This year, increases to school funding (mainly to pay for increases to starting teachers' salaries) and other significant changes to the teaching profession backed by state officials have bogged down in the legislature. Glass has made teachers a particular focus during his time in the state.

When I contacted Glass seeking comment, he said in a message that, "I'm honored to be considered" for the Eagle County job but declined to discuss the matter further given his status as a finalist. The AP reported that Branstad's administration said Glass' position as a finalist for Eagle County's top job signifies his status as a "top talent." The Des Moines Register reported that he would be getting a pay raise if he went to Colorado. Right now he makes $147,000 annually, the paper said, but he would earn $175,000 per year in Eagle County, if not more.

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The push for a voucher or tax-credit scholarship program in Texas earlier this year may have died a swift death, but Lone Star lawmakers are giving serious consideration now to lifting the cap on charter schools. And their compatriots in Massachusetts are eyeing a similar move, although there's a split there between Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and teachers' unions.

Right now in Texas, there's a cap of 215 charters that the state can grant to operators. Although an organization can use one charter to operate multiple schools in Texas, there are still fewer charter schools in the state (506) than in Florida, which has 579 charter schools operating in the 2012-13 year despite Florida's significantly smaller student enrollment. Sen. Dan Patrick, a Republican who leads the Senate Education Committee and failed in his tax-credit push, is also behind the legislative effort to lift the charter cap. Patrick's bill, which passed the Senate April 11, would raise the cap from 215 up to 305 by Sept. 1, 2019. If the current proportion of charters granted to charter schools opened is maintained, 305 charters would lead to about 718 charter schools in the state, although that number could change wildly especially if a big charter-school management group opens shop in Texas.

Patrick and other lawmakers attended a May 8 rally to support lifting the charter cap, as the House considers its own bill to grant more charters. (Patrick's original senate bill would have done away with a cap altogether.) The House bill is less generous, lifting the cap from 215 to 275 by 2019, although in practical terms that could amount to vastly fewer numbers of charter schools. The senator reminded the audience at the rally that in 2009 and 2011, similar legislation passed in the senate but flopped in the house. Remember, charter schools have been agitating for more influence in Texas for some time now—charters filed their own lawsuit last summer claiming that the state did not adequately support them.

Meanwhile, in the Bay State, Mayor Thomas Menino, a Democrat, is pushing to lift the cap on the number of charter schools that can operate in Boston. In Massachusetts, there are charters that answer to the state, and "in district" charters that, in Boston's case, answer to a city committee whose members are appointed by the mayor. Menino wants to expand the number of "in district" charters, but not, apparently, the number of charter schools overseen by the state. Right now, Boston has 22 such charters, but there's a waiting list of about 25,000 students seeking a place in them.

Menino drew heavily on a Stanford CREDO study showing significant learning advantages for students at Boston charters compared to their peers in regular public schools (that study has its share of detractors, however). The study also has a separate section on Massachusetts charter schools not limited to Boston, and charter advocates in the state are for lifting a state cap created in a 2010 law on all charters schools throughout the state. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, hasn't weighed in on whether to lift the state charter cap.

There's also a poll, commissioned by Education Reform Now, that purports to show that 73 percent of 445 Boston residents polled support charter schools (the number rose to 89 percent among black women who were polled). However, as the blogger edushyster pointed out, the same poll showed that the top concern for the city's education system was "budgets cuts and lack of funding" which many see as at odds with or very different from the mission of charter supporters. (Budget fears tied for the top concern in the poll with "lack of parental involvement.")

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Colorado could prove to be an interesting test case for just how receptive voters are to big changes to K-12 funding, in the wake of landmark education legislation that state lawmakers approved last week.

As I've written before, the plan crafted by Democratic Sen. Mike Johnston emphasizes drastically improving school attendance figures, and mandates funding for full-day kindergarten and half-day preschool, as well as revenue equalization for high-needs districts based on their share of low-income and English-language learner students. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill in his state.

These sort of ideas are gaining traction in a few other states, most notably in California, where "weighted funding" is being pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, although even relatively liberal lawmakers aren't clambering over each other to adopt his plan.

But as an excellent summary from EdNews Colorado points out, it's one thing for policies to be popular among legislators; it's quite another for these ideas to complete a migration to success at the ballot box. In order to pay for the Colorado plan, voters in that state will have to approve a roughly $1 billion tax hike. (Colorado requires any state tax hike to ultimately be put to voters.) Todd Engdahl writes that advocates from both the business and education communities are supposed to decide soon on a single ballot measure that voters could give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Apparently, there's even disagreement about whether the measure should be on the ballot this year, or put off. And a separate piece of legislation requiring a 2.7 percent increase in basic per-pupil funding is also headed to Hickenlooper. Could too many cooks in the state's K-12 kitchen spoil the campaign?

When I spoke to Jane Urschel of the Colorado School Boards Association last month, she emphasized that it's an open question how much Hickenlooper will lobby the public to support the tax increase, regardless of the expectation that he will sign the bill. He has a re-election campaign of his own to worry about in 2014.

And what about the Colorado Supreme Court? It has a case under consideration, Lobato v. Colorado, that could completely upend what Johnston is trying to accomplish. The suit, filed back in 2005, alleges inadequate K-12 funding from the state. A lower court ruled in the plaintiffs' favor. In light of the just-passed bill, will the justices rule that the plaintiffs' complaints have been answered by legislative action? Will they rule for the plaintiffs and require lawmakers to go back to the drawing board to devise an entirely new funding scheme? Justices don't have to worry about what lawmakers do, but between the per-pupil funding hike and the tax increase legislation, they've likely at least taken notice of significant efforts to change the way education funding works in Colorado.

In any event, the situation in Colorado shows that whatever recent policy approaches gain popularity among officials, each state has sometimes unique hurdles that advocates have to clear, and even with the majority party's backing (Colorado is controlled by Democrats), victory in such matters is far from assured.

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It was big news in November when Kentucky released test scores based on what were generally acknowledged as the first common-core-based assessments in the nation. The state said it was pleased with the scores despite drops in student proficiency. But now there's testing news in Kentucky that's much more difficult, if not impossible, to view as positive.

The problem is with the Bluegrass State's end-of-course exams for high school students that are provided by the test vendor ACT and based on the common core. The Bluegrass Institute, a conservative think tank that opposes the common core, reported that in January the Kentucky education department discontinued the scoring of constructed-response answers on all four of these tests, and would only oversee scoring of the multiple-choice items on the exams. This was due to problems scoring the previous end-of-course exams that led to the tests failing to add "instructional value" for schools and students.

The responsibility for scoring subsequent end-of-course constructed-response items has been shifted from the state education department to local districts.

This isn't the only major testing problem in Kentucky, by the way. The education department announced that there had been a separate "technical glitch" that led to slow or dropped connections with ACT's online testing platform. Sometimes only individual students were affected, but sometimes entirely classes were. The problems began on April 30 and continued through the week, the department said. Remember that Indiana and Oklahoma have experienced online testing problems last week, and Minnesota did before that. And on May 5, Kentucky announced it was pulling the plug on the problem-plagued online testing platforms and will now finish off the testing period only with pencil-and-paper exams.

Back to the constructed-response scoring issue. When I called up the Kentucky department about this issue, it passed along a statement explaining that because of the inability of the ACT to score these written-response items in a timely fashion that was helpful to teachers and students, such items would become a local responsibility.

"Moving forward, KDE [the Kentucky department] will be monitoring and surveying all high schools to see how they build constructed response into their final grades. KDE will review the information and determine if additional changes are necessary to ensure constructed response items are part of local assessments," the statement read.

However, it appears from the statement that these items in end-of-course tests will no longer factor into the state accountability model (there is also a local accountability model referred to in the statement as the "final grades" for high schools).

The Bluegrass Institute's Richard Innes said that this problem with testing contracts would become a national problem as such tests put more of a strain on testing companies' resources.

"I just don't think the resources are available to allow testing companies to do quality scoring in the time-frame allowed at a cost the states can bear," he said, noting that Kentucky has had problems with scoring written responses on tests for years. He later added of this fundamental problem, "It's not going to go away."

He said that despite the department's statement, one district he talked to had decided simply not to give constructed-response items to students as a result of the end-of-course testing change. Another had decided to give these items to students before the rest of the end-of-course tests, in order to have more time to graduate. (Innes declined to identify which districts he was referring to.)

The Bluegrass Institute's news alert quoted Kentucky lawmakers who (apparently) are just learning of the news, and they aren't happy. State Senate Pro Tem President Katie Stine, a Republican and member of the Senate Education Committee, said the news made her question whether the testing program still complied with the 2009 law that brought it into existence (and which she co-sponsored): "Because the Kentucky Legislature is ultimately responsible for education in the state, legislators need to hear from the KDE and others regarding this very disturbing development."

In a message from Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday (that has a date of Feb. 1 attached but appears to have been published March 8), officials emphasized what they deemed were positive aspects of the scoring change, saying that the assessments would now be 100 percent computer-scored, and would allow the tests to be administered on the last day of classes because they could be scored quickly.

"So, in summary, we believe it is a win-win for teachers and the state. High school teachers get a more useful final exam with instant results. The state gets accountability information and CR [constructed-response] questions are still an important part of the model," the state department said.

You can read more about technology problems with testing in-depth in an article on technology problems in state testing regimens by my colleague Michelle Davis.

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