Now that the much-ballyhooed Common Core State Standards being pushed by the Obama administration have been drafted, the National PTA is launching a well-funded campaign to sell these curricular prescriptions for K-12 education.

With $1 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National PTA is rolling out its propaganda guns first in Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and North Carolina, and it expects to hit other states by mid-2010.

Were parents truly represented in the drive for national education standards, they would have been consulted before this train left the station and given the chance to say whether one set of standards for all 50 states is a good idea.

In truth, the Chicago-based National PTA long ago became just another Big Education interest group. It has marched in lockstep with the national teachers unions, even supporting teacher strikes and opposing all forms of school choice for parents. Its membership rolls, which peaked at 12 million in the 1960s, have dropped to 5.2 million as parents have gravitated to locally based parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) that truly look out for their interests.

The Common Core initiative is far from a grassroots undertaking. Led by staffers from the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the standards-writing has proceeded behind closed doors with hand-picked academicians in charge.

The mantra has been that this effort is state-led, and adoption of the academic standards will be entirely at the discretion of state and local officials.

But the Obama administration’s final regulations (issued in Nov.) for its $4.35 billion Race to the Top incentive fund reveal an uglier reality. To receive a share of that stimulus money, states must participate in the common standards and use a federally funded national test (yet to be developed) that will be aligned with them.

At a Dec. 8 House Education Committee hearing, Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) complained that the U.S. Department of Education had transformed the Common Core “from a voluntary, state-based initiative to a set of federal academic standards with corresponding federal tests.” Calling this an unwise federal intrusion, Thompson, a former school board member, said he had concerns about “what role parents and local education officials will play if the Common Core becomes a de facto national curriculum.” Advocates of national standards deride the low bar some states set for student achievement in order to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. While that is true, other states—such as Massachusetts and Virginia—have won praise for adopting relatively high standards. The Common Core could oblige some states to lower their standards while imposing a lid on improvement by others.

The answer surely is not replacing 50 sets of differing, sometimes-squishy standards with one set dictated by Washington that may also be squishy and filled with political correctness after all the education interests have exerted their influence.

A federal takeover of K-12 education is no less a peril to freedom than socialized medicine. The Tea Party movement ought to conduct a new round of town hall meetings devoted to federal involvement in schooling. Would parents prefer a choice of schools offering diverse curricula, or cookie-cutter schools designed by the federal government? By all means, invite the National PTA and let parents determine whether its agenda matches their wishes.

Robert Holland (rholland@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for education policy with The Heartland Institute in Chicago.