According to a few new surveys, the name "Common Core" needs to get a face-lift. Two recent opinion polls show that public support for the standards is slipping, and marketing professionals suggest that using the name may play a big role. 

When the journal EducationNext asked people two very similar questions about the Common Core, but didn't use the name "Common Core" in one of them, supports for the standards jumped from 53 to 69%, according to MarketPlace.org. Partisan differences also have disappeared, the aricle said. While 43% of Republicans said they support the Common Core, 68% said they supported them when the name was removed from the question. The same results were found with Democrats. 

“Most Americans and most educators agree with the concept of more rigorous college and career ready standards,” said Kentucky Commissioner of Education Terry Holliday, a strong proponent of the standards. “Where we started losing public support for Common Core is that the term ‘Common Core’ has become polarized.”

The article compares these results to Obamacare, and that people liked a lot of the components when it was referred to the Affordable Care Act, but not when it was called "Obamacare. Opposition to the Common Core standards, the article said, may stem from misconceptions about what they comprise. A poll in March 2013 by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 40% of people had an unfavorable view of the health care law. Similarily 70% of respondents in the EducationNext survey thought incorrectly that the Common Core would allow the federal government to collect data on individual students' test scores, the article said. 

Half of the respondents also believe the Common Core was a federal program that all states were required to adopt. More than one-third thought that states using Common Core couldn't choose their own textbooks or class materials. 

So would changing the name really make a difference?, the article asks. 

"The name is the name," said Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, which helped devise the standards. "I don't think that's what will necessarily do it. A lot of folks see the common core as federal overreach. Clearly we have to get our message out that these are just standards and they aren't telling teachers what to teach."

Read the full story. 

Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor