Donald Trump first said he would be "getting rid of Common Core" at a Republican primary debate in 2016. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declared the Common Core was "dead" in 2018. But the federal government ultimately has very little control over whether states decide to adopt Common Core standards.

The Common Core was developed by governors and state education officials, to be adopted independently by multiple states. The idea was that students would have the same academic standards nationwide and graduate with the same reading, writing, and math skills. It placed extra emphasis on critical thinking skills and outlined how schools would teach their math and English curriculum. It also created standards that were easy to test.

The Common Core was popular at first and adopted as public education standards by most states from 2010 to 2012. After the standards were implemented and testing began in 2014, the tide changed. The Harvard Ed. Magazine described the movement against the Common Core as a "growing nationwide resistance from an unusual coalition of right-wingers, liberals, teachers, and parents, for a variety of very different reasons." 

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 37 states still use Common Core or a revised version of the standards. 

According to the NCSL analysis, two states, Kentucky and Florida, have dropped the Common Core and implemented completely new standards since we checked this promise in 2017.

Trump opposes the state adoption of the standards because they apply a specific national set of standards to local school districts. When Trump ran in 2016, his early ads and speeches argued that "education has to be at a local level."

Early in his term, he ordered DeVos to conduct a review of how the federal government could be "unlawfully interfering" in local education programs.

It's not clear if any review was performed; the Education Department hasn't released a public report. 

Trump's order cited the Every Student Succeeds Act, a 2015 amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Under the 2015 law, states submit their own public education standards so they can receive Title I funding for schools in low-income areas, where students need more support to fulfill academic standards. These standards outline how schools will prepare students in K-12 for higher education and technical schools, including what skills students will focus on in each subject, how to test those skills, and how they will measure student success statewide. The Common Core outlines all of this and was already widely adopted by 2015.

The 2015 amendment also says that the secretary and president can't force states to include or remove any academic standards in the public education standards plans they submit. They can only ask for vague edits to make standards more thorough before a state receives funding. 

This means "the federal government cannot require or incentivize states to adopt Common Core State Standards — or to get rid of Common Core State Standards," said Reid Setzer, director of government affairs at the Education Trust. 

Nicholas Tampio, a political science professor at Fordham University, told PolitiFact that states tend to "use tests and curricula that align with the standards" because "the market for alternatives is small." Plans that are modeled after the Common Core have historically been accepted, without much editing, by the federal government for states to receive funding.

There have been mixed reviews from education experts on how new state standards compare with the Common Core.

The Fordham Institute, a think tank that has been covering the Common Core for two decades, conducted a review of Florida's 2020 B.E.S.T. standards in early June. The Tampa Bay Times reported that the institute's review criticized the English section for not having "any direction for reading of specific disciplines, such as science."

A recent review from the Independent Institute, a center-right leaning organization, disagreed with the Fordham review. Their review of Florida's B.E.S.T. standards commends the English standards for how they support teachers using literature to teach students about "the human condition and the world." The Tampa Bay Times reported that their new review "deemed the critique that Florida rushed its work and needed more time as slanderous." The Times also noted how both groups are on opposite sides of the Common Core debate.

Any moves against Common Core still have to come from the states, and nothing Trump has done has changed that. We rate this Promise Broken.