cost of most schools is their administration. The best argument against a national set of standards is that what America's schools do not need is more administrators, nor can they afford them.
In addition to this political objection, the religious or evangelical objection is essentially a fear that national standards drafted and codified will in time become federal standards which will include federal codification of evolution as "educational" material that excludes God or otherwise violates the facts of their beliefs. Massell quotes the 1990 California Department of Education framework for science: "It is essential to show that classification of living things is based on evolution, because evolution explains both the similarities among living things and the diverse paths taken by different groups through geologic time" (87-89). The creation theory states that this similarity of design is evidence of a single, intelligent Creator, while diverse paths show both the diversity and persistence of life to adapt to changes in environment wrought by man's sin. Meanwhile, the fossil record's jumps and appearances of fully formed species without any fossils showing transition from one species to another supports creation and contradicts (or at least fails to support) evolution. Yet, here is the State of California defining its "higher standards" in terms of the evolutionism that evangelicals and other religious people oppose and many other scientists find serious problems with. An imposition of standards so defined could constitute a violation of the parents' first amendment rights, by having the government impose the doctrine of evolution (or at least oppose the doctrine of creation.)
The response to these objections is that any national standards will not so much dictate as suggest, or at worst, coerce, "exerting pressure on states and localities" (p. 2). This is what the federal government does now in such diverse areas as education...