Here's an article from NJ about the difficulty states will face executing on the common standards (with a nice quote from DFER's Charles Barone):

When the state Board of Education signed on to the new national standards for language arts and math last month, it joined what is now 24 other states setting a single milestone for what every child should be taught in school and when.

But the real work has only just begun, as the vote set off a flurry of activity for the state to next develop a matching "model curriculum" for schools to follow and move toward new state assessments, both short- and long-term.

… "Standards aren't going to mean much unless you measure everyone in the same way," said Charles Barone, a policy analyst for the Democrats for Education Reform, a New York-based group now with a branch in New Jersey.

"Otherwise, it just sits on a shelf in Trenton, while some students continue to be asked to achieve at one level and others at another," he said.

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