A pair of commentaries in Sunday’s edition of The Telegraph took opposing viewpoints about the Common Core state standards that have been adopted by 45 states, including New Hampshire, and the District of Columbia.

After reading the article from Nashua Superintendent Mark Conrad, one could conclude that the pushback the Common Core standards have generated here and around the country is much ado about nothing. They are merely a set of state guidelines that spell out what concepts we want to teach our students in math and English, said Conrad, whose district is weighing adoption of the standards; they do not undermine local control of education, Local school boards will still approve the curricula that’s taught in their districts, but Common Core will help assure that students who graduate from a Nashua high school have the same set of skills as those who graduate from other schools.

And therein lies the problem, according to the column written by Ann Marie Banfield, a Bedford resident who does research on education for Cornerstone Action, a right-wing think tank based in Manchester.

Banfield’s argument is that the standards are too low, wrongly de-emphasize the learning of facts and will put our students even further behind those of other countries whose educational systems are much more rigorous than our own. The standards, she claims, will only contribute to the decline in our educational system.

America has been dropping on the charts of world educational achievement for some time now, and we suspect Common Core isn’t going to significantly change that one way or the other. The fact that there are differences in what is being taught from state to state is hardly our most pressing problem, and it won’t matter that schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts are teaching the same same stuff, if it’s the wrong stuff. But even if Common Core represents the right stuff, that may not matter, either, if the nation’s public schools don’t get a handle on the drug, violence and other problems that disrupt the learning environment in many schools.

The fact that nearly all states have adopted the Common Core standards ought to be a red flag, because you rarely see that kind of national consensus on anything that doesn’t involve giving away “free” money. That, we suspect, may account for why educators are pushing so hard for their boards to adopt Common Core; doing so can improve the chances of getting Department of Education grants under the “Race to the Top” program. Money colors judgment, and that’s a lousy reason to let the federal government into our classrooms more than they already are.

Critics of Common Core have been strident in their opposition, but there’s no question they are passionate and well-intentioned and stridency doesn’t necessarily equal wrong. In fact, the people who oversee our schools would do well to consider that at least some of the criticisms of Common Core may be valid.

The concept that local boards of education hold any real sway over what gets taught in schools went out the classroom window years ago. It is, in fact, a myth.

But that doesn’t mean local boards should hastily rubber-stamp the Common Core standards, either. If they’re going to approve them, they should take their time, examine them with a critical eye and adapt them as much as possible to create the best possible outcomes.

Which is what they’d probably tell students to do when faced with a similar set of circumstances.

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