State Agency or Actor Who Adopted the Common Core

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State Agency or Actor Who Adopted the Common Core

The primary role of state legislatures is to enact state statutes through the legislative process. Ultimately, state legislatures write the laws that governors will sign. Under education policy, for example, many legislatures have enacted laws that assign the courses required for high school graduation. State and local education agencies must then provide all high school students the opportunity to enroll in those courses. If it disagrees with a state or local education agency policy promulgated to execute these graduation requirements, the state legislature—for the most part—can modify or nullify those policies. 

In the case of oversight of state education standards, ultimately legislatures have the power to pass legislation changing statutes; except in cases where authority for education state standards is established by the state constitution (for instance, Hawaii—there, the legislature could propose a constitutional amendment to modify that authority). 

In most states, the state board of educationis responsible for formulating and approving state education standards. A handful of states, however, require legislative action. Some examples include:

• Maine – The Maine Department of Education, in consultation with the Maine State Board of Education, is responsible for formulating state education standards. State standards are promulgated by rule of the Maine Department of Education. The Maine State Legislature then has approval authority over rules that are provisionally-adopted by the Department that constitute a “major substantive” rule, i.e., not a “routine technical” rule.

• Nevada – The Council to Establish Academic Standards in Education addresses the establishment and revision of the State’s academic standards. The Council consists of eight members; members are appointed by the Governor (four members) and Legislative Leadership (four members). The State Board of Education reviews and adopts the standards as submitted by the Council. After adopting a regulation concerning the state standards, the Department of Education must submit a copy of the regulation to the Legislative Counsel for review by the Legislative Commission to determine whether the regulation conforms to the statutory authority pursuant to which it was adopted and whether the regulation carries out the intent of the Legislature in granting that authority.

• Texas – The Legislature grants the State Board of Education the exclusive authority to adopt standards. But, the legislature can take away or limit the Board's authority over the standards through statute. The Legislature could adopt standards into statute, which could override Board action.

• Vermont – Standards are adopted through the rule-making process and must be approved by a legislative committee on rule-review. All powers of the State Board of Education are statutory and can be changed. Therefore, the legislature has ultimate control, although there is no express legislative veto provision.

The table below contains information on authorizing entity charged with adopting academic standards. NCSL's Sunny Deye initially compiled this information from responses provided by the Legislative Education Staff Network in September 2010. Updates and adjustments have been made as of March 2014.

Print version available here.