High-quality national education standards sounded like such a good idea. But as Common Core rolls out in classrooms across the country, teachers and parents are finding this great idea has lots of problems.

Michael McShane is an education research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and he's been writing a 10-part series called "Dispatches from a Nervous Common Core Observer." The former teacher joins the podcast to discuss how a little less PR and a little more critical thinking would have dissuaded more states from excitedly tossing their students into this nationwide experiment. He raises concerns about curriculum, testing, teacher preparation, and the looming specter of federal entanglement.