If what’s past is truly prologue, there’s a good chance 2013 will be remembered as the year the free-market education reform movement crested and began to subside. After a decade of gathering momentum, reform politics began to founder in the face of communities fighting for equitable and progressive public education. Within the year’s first weeks, a historic test boycott was underway, civil rights advocates confronted Arne Duncan on school closings, and thousands were marching in Texas to roll back reforms.

Perhaps we should have sensed this coming: the Chicago Teachers Union strike in the fall of 2012 foreshadowed the education struggles that would take center stage in 2013. In addition to fair contract provisions, they called for a new course for public schools: well-rounded curriculum, fewer mandated tests, more nurses and social workers, an end to racially discriminatory disciplinary policies, and early childhood education, among other demands.

10. Common Core Coalition Crumbling

Just as Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have become ascendant, supported by over 40 states and glutted with hundreds of millions in federal funding, they’ve come up against widespread pushback. At least 17 states now show signs of cold feet on the Common Core.

The K-12 curriculum guidelines, initially the darling of statehouses nationwide, have aroused suspicion and pique in their public entrée. The standards’ implementation will likely cause test scores to crater, as they have in Kentucky and New York, exacerbating evaluation pressures on teachers and threatening more schools with closure. Some see the standards as a costly anduntested imposition driven largely by firms hungry for the profits nationalized standards may bring—for instance, 68% of districts plan to purchase new CCSS-aligned materials.

The Common Core grew out of a baffling public-private partnership funded by the ubiquitousGates Foundation and textbook manufacturer Pearson, which was recently fined over $7 million for using its charitable arm to peddle Common-Core-aligned products.

Resistance has emerged in state legislatures as well as the grassroots (including an unfortunateGlenn Beck-inspired contingent that fears the indoctrination of children with “extreme leftist ideology”). Two public school moms in Indiana successfully petitioned the legislature to pauseCCSS rollout there. In a series of New York town hall meetings, CCSS protesters aired their (occasionally vituperative) grievances to the education commissioner, and the state subsequently announced a testing drawdown. Several states, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, havewithdrawn from the Common Core’s testing consortium, PARCC.

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