A newly published unfavorable report on the effectiveness of the Common Core standards for America’s public school curricula has Core crusaders scrambling to find excuses for the poor results … or ignoring the results altogether.

Statistics from the recently released Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reveal that students in the United States have fallen from fifth place in the world to 13th.

Though education elitists have tried to blame students stuck in poverty as a possible cause, American Principles Project Foundation Senior Fellow Jane Robbins believes the real explanation for students’ academic failure is obvious.

"One would ask the question, ‘What happened in American schools between 2011 and 2015 that might have had some effect on this?’ and the answer – at least the obvious answer – that one would look at first would be the implementation of Common Core," Robbins asserted.

Instead of blaming the deficiencies on the federally devised standards themselves, Robbins says Core proponents point to inadequate teacher training and a delay in providing good curriculum.

"I guess it's the natural human tendency to be defensive when something that you advocated is turning out well and say, 'Well, you know, I guess we were wrong,'” the education expert offered. “So far, we haven't heard anybody say 'I guess we were wrong,’ – and I'm not sure that we ever will."

Robbins maintains that if proponents truly cared about children, they would be doing a sober analysis of why the Common Core is not working, as well as offering ways to rescue students from the problematic federal standards.