The unpopularity of the Common Core educational standards is not causing it’s proponents to rethink it but to rebrand it. “In 2010, every state but Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia adopted Common Core State Standards, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in each grade in math and English language arts,” Joy Pullmann writes in the second edition of Common Core: A Bad Choice for America, published by the Heartland Institute. “Five years later, three in five Americans said they don’t know if Common Core is in their local schools.”

“While 25 states have renamed Common Core to avoid a growing public backlash against these mandates, 43 states kept Common Core standards in some form and are now using them to teach students.” In other words, most states are still using them but more than half the country is trying to dupe parents into thinking they are not.

During the campaign season, this subterfuge enabled certain Republican candidates for president to deliver full-throated denunciations of Common Core even while scarcely lifting a finger to do anything about it. For example, three states that abandoned Common Core classic for new Common Core were Indiana, New Jersey and Louisiana.

Now you can connect the governors.