Finally, a well-known personality on the right has challenged the untouchable education change agent and Common Core supporter Michelle Rhee.

In response to Rhee’s praise of the Common Core Standards on Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin wrote that she would be willing to go on the air to debate the school reformer.

During the Baier interview, Rhee repeated the talking points that the CCS are internationally benchmarked and that every school district has the ability to choose its own curriculum to fit the standards.  Neither of these assertions is true.

There is no proof that Common Core has met international benchmarks, and most available curricula and assessments have been created for the standards.  Where’s the choice in curricula?

Rhee revealed her bias toward the substandard Common Core a year ago, but only after she had completed the directive of getting Republican governors across the country to buy into the Eli Broad/Bill Gates brand of education reform.

At the same time as Rhee was peddling her policies of eliminating teacher tenure, tying students’ grades to teacher pay, increasing testing, and collecting data of students’ information, her StudentsFirst colleagues and creators of Common Core, David Coleman and Jason Zimba, were busy selling the Common Core to those same governors.

The former D.C. Chancellor of Schools made her debut onto the national stage when she was profiled in the documentary Waiting for Superman in 2010.  Since then, most of the media outlets that have given her face time and positive press coverage have been on the right.

Until now.

Michelle Malkin detests Common Core, so it makes sense that she would want to debate anybody who supports it.  This would be a welcome change from the typically fawning conservative media over Rhee.

My co-author, M. Catharine Evans, and I have written thirty-plus articles on American Thinker about Michelle Rhee since 2011.  We’re glad a high-profile person on the right has now taken notice.

Ann Kane is editor of Watchdog Wire North Carolina.  Email: northcarolina@watchdogwire.com