HARRISBURG, Pa. – Things are getting strange in the Keystone State.

Teacher unions and tea party groups – two groups that “rarely, if ever, play on the same team” – are joining together to prevent the new Common Core learning standards from taking effect on July 1, report the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

While the groups’ ultimate goal might be the same, their motives are very different.

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Tea party activists and other political conservatives believe the new K-12 learning standards in math and English are a back-door attempt by the federal government to nationalize public education. They want to preserve local control of public education.

Teacher union members and their supporters don’t necessarily oppose the idea of national learning standards. Their main gripe is that the new requirements are not being accompanied with increased K-12 funding they contend is necessary to ensure the standards are properly implemented. That means teachers are being set up to fail, they say.

“You assume that we can put in this new program and the state is going to say, ‘Aren’t we wonderful, we’ve raised the flag, we’re wonderful because we have new high standards,” state Sen. Andy Dinniman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “But if we don’t have the financial resources to get every single student to the top of the curriculum, it’s a sham, it’s a charade and we’re raising false hopes of the students.”

AFT Pennsylvania – a statewide teachers union – also believes educators need more professional training before being required to teach the new standards.

That’s another reason the union has “joined the call for a moratorium” on the Pennsylvania Common Core, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

Will the growing, bipartisan opposition to Common Core be enough to derail the new standards from taking effect in just six weeks.

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Tim Eller, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Department of Education, doesn’t think so.

Eller explained to the Post-Gazette that Pennsylvania Common Core is a blend of the new national standards and the state’s previous learning requirements.

If activists and lawmakers succeed in killing off the blended standards that have been adopted and are scheduled to kick in on July 1, the national Common Core standards would take effect by default, Eller said.

“I don’t think opponents realize if this current regulatory package is killed or disapproved, the Common Core remains,” Eller said.

If that’s the case, Pennsylvania’s teacher unions and tea party groups face a much bigger task of rolling back Common Core than they realize.