"Tell how to make 10 when adding 8 + 5."

So went one much-discussed Common Core question that students in Ohio puzzled over.

Anecdotes of confusingly worded math problems abound. They have dominated the conversation about standardized testing in recent years — to such an extent that the prominence of the tests themselves seems like an entirely new phenomenon.

It’s not. While the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) may be new, the notion of “standards" — as educational units — dates back to 1983.

A Brief History of “Standards" Before the Common Core

The standards-based education — which established math and reading academic expectations and accountability measures — was implemented in the latter half of the 1990s. At that time, the development of the specific standards was left to each individual state. While some of the standards were similar from state to state, others varied, in many cases so they could cover state-specific content. For example, starting in 1996, schools in Florida followed the Sunshine State Standards, which (as their name suggests) were state-specific. In science, for instance, sixth-grade students studying geography would learn about specific Floridian landforms{: target="_blank" rel="nofollow" }. For roughly 25 years, all of the states were like Florida: They developed and implemented their own standards.

Then came Race to the Top, which introduced the CCSS and sought to implement learning standards at the national level. As of today, the Common Core has been adopted by 42 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. By this time in 2016, most states have been through one or two full school years with the Common Core math and English language arts (ELA) standards.

This has brought students across the country into educational alignment. That is, the standards that guide the curriculum in a second-grade classroom in Greensboro, North Carolina are the same standards that guide the curriculum in a second-grade classroom in Los Angeles, California. The two schools’ curricula may be different, and the teachers and students are certainly different, but the Common Core classroom activities share a common set of learning goals. In other words, what students are expected to know by the end of second grade is meant to be the same, regardless of geography.

That is, however, unless a given classroom is in one of the states that hasn’t adopted the standards. Those states are Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Virginia, Indiana, and South Carolina. Minnesota only adopted the ELA standards. Now, these states that haven’t adopted the Common Core still have standards; they just use their own, as Florida did in the 1990s.

A Future History of the Common Core

In the wake of the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), however, the future is about to look more like the past — the 1990s past. Signed by President Obama on December 10, 2015, ESSA is both a revision of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) from 2002 and a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was signed into law in 1965 and offered scholarships for low-income students as well as grants and funding for textbooks, library books, and educational centers. ESEA also gave state agencies access to federal grants for elementary and secondary education.

ESSA affects how states implement the Common Core. Although those states that have adopted the Common Core will still create curricula generated by those standards, there will be much more autonomy at the state level. ESSA also de-emphasizes the importance of student scores on standardized tests — and of those scores’ impact on teacher assessments. As a result, teachers may experience more freedom to adapt their lessons to the needs of their students. Although the 2015–2016 school year won’t be affected by the enactment of ESSA, the 2016–2017 school year will start to see changes. Many experts are already predicting that ESSA will affect the quality of recruited teachers, and that the law will result in greater state control over educational content.

What will not change with ESSA, for now, is the overall concept of the CCSS, or of the “standard" as a unit of education.