WASHINGTON, D.C. – The policy experts at the conservative-ish Thomas B. Fordham Institute are genuinely perplexed over why the American people are so hostile to the Common Core experiment, which they have helped promote.

In a recent FOX News appearance, Fordham Institute trustee Mike Kelly suggested that parents’ frustrations are the result of “a lack of information” and “misinformation” about the one-size-fits-all learning standards.

To prove his point, Kelly addressed the concerns of Lindsey Bocskay, an Arizona mom whose first-grade daughter recently failed a math assignment – even though she got the all the correct answers – because she didn’t use the Common Core math technique of “adding tens.”

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“‘Add tens’ – I don’t even know what that means,” Bocskay, a Common Core opponent, said in pre-recorded sound bite.

Kelly said the confusion Bocskay and other parents are experiencing isn’t due to the Common Core math standards themselves, but rather the poor implementation of these great new standards.

“Why isn’t the teacher who’s implementing this communicating (the rationale behind the assignment) more effectively?” Kelly asked.

Perhaps the unnamed teacher in question isn’t explaining things clearly to Bocskay because he or she doesn’t understand Common Core, either.

Remember, this K-12 overhaul was foisted onto teachers and parents without their input just three or four years ago, depending on when their state adopted Common Core. Since then, teachers have been scrambling to understand the new math and English expectations – which “bleed through” into most other subject areas – and to find appropriate new lesson plans. Many teachers have commented that it’s tough to explain an idea or concept to a student when they don’t fully understand it themselves.

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Then, in Bocskay’s situation, there’s the matter of who elementary school teachers are.

Elementary teachers are typically some of the nicest and most caring people on the planet, but the very nature of their job requires them to be a “jack of all (academic) trades” in the classroom. They are not trained to be specialists in a single subject area, as many secondary teachers are. That means they’re going to need a significant amount of time to understand Common Core’s bizarre new approach to instruction.

Here’s the bottom line: Common Core is bombing with the American people, but it’s not the fault of the overwhelmed and underprepared teachers who are trying to implement it on the fly. The blame rests solely with the elites who decided to remake the education system with a set of non-field-tested standards, and without any debate, input or questions from parents, educators, taxpayers or lawmakers.

The elites made this mess all on their own. The elites are even culpable for the “misinformation” that’s circulating online because they chose to sneak Common Core through the backdoor when no one was looking. If they had been honest and upfront with the American people about what Common Core is and why they wanted it, they could have squelched all the incorrect rumors and “conspiracy theories” before they began.

Of course, that approach might not have been able to squelch all the criticism about the standards – which is why they opted to not bring Common Core through the front door.

America may be changing in a lot of ways, but most citizens still hold tightly to the principle of locally controlled public schools. They don’t want their schools even indirectly controlled by a group of central planners – not even well-meaning, conservative ones.