There are people on the political fringe, right and left, who oppose the Core, but that’s not where most of the opposition is coming from. Duncan’s latest comments about suburban moms seems to indicate he recognizes that regular Americans don’t like it, either — but only because their delusions about their brilliant children have been shattered by Common Core tests.

Duncan has repeatedly said the new Core-aligned standardized tests — being designed by two multistate consortia with some $350 million in federal money — would be light years ahead of the current tests. As it turns out, it’s not true. Neither the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium nor the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers have had enough time or money to develop truly “game-changing” exams in terms of how they can really measure the broad range of student abilities, according to a recent report by Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education, a panel of educational leaders, which said: