Iowa has always prided itself on academic excellence. We live in a state which, historically, has been the place for education initiatives to blossom and educational professionals to thrive. Iowa, after all, is the birthplace of the Iowa Test of Basic skills and the ACT college assessment — both nationally recognized assessment tests. And in the 1980s and 1990s, our Midwest state led the country in reading and math scores, for several grades.

But that is no longer the case.

According to a report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2009, Iowa’s scores fell from “top in the nation to average.” The achievement disparity between students with and without disabilities was actually the largest in the nation — and only 29 percent of Iowa students, according to the study, were enrolled in Algebra I or any other higher level math course. Only three states recorded lower math enrollment figures.

Finally, in 2010, two-thirds of Iowa high school students failed to meet the requirements for the ACT  — the test that educators in our state were the first to develop and implement. This means that only one-third of our graduating students actually proved themselves to be prepared for college.

“Over the last two decades, Iowa has stagnated educationally,” said former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at the 2011 Iowa Education Summit. “Many nations and states are now out-performing Iowa.” Duncan cited several reasons for this shift in education dominance, with lowered standards for college readiness and educator ineffectiveness as two of the most important.

So far during his term, Gov. Terry Branstad has enabled several education reforms that hold teachers to higher standards, as well as changing the way they are evaluated and paid. But Iowa needs more. We need a comprehensive, statewide education standard for teachers to follow and students to be tested on.

Branstad said in his September address to the Iowa Board of Education, that because Iowa was the last state to implement national standards for its education system, it has fallen behind in a big way. What we need are standards — and we need them to be high.

On July 29, 2010, Iowa adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a program created to get each state on the “same page” with education. Common Core standards are designed to build off of current state standards and clearly spell out the concepts and ideas students should be learning at specific grade levels, from kindergarten to graduation. Iowa will fully adopt these standards during the 2014-15 school year.

The problem is, Branstad will likely face opposition in promoting these standards during the coming year. Republicans and some Democrats prefer to maintain the more localized control of education systems; across the nation, tea party supporters and more conservative congress members have fought against the Common Core curriculum, claiming that it equalizes every public classroom in America. But what’s wrong with that?

If each classroom has the freedom to implement the curriculum they wish, while still meeting the Common Core testing standards, there is no reason to oppose the new program. Based on the data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, lacking a set of central guidelines is causing more harm than good to Iowa students and Iowa’s education reputation.

Branstad needs our support in his efforts to improve Iowa. These problems can — and should — be addressed in order to return Iowa to its place at the top of the nation’s education system.

Iowa needs statewide standards for students, from mathematics to reading, and they need to be high. Without offering some sort of central plan for teachers to follow, and a set of expectations for students to learn, Iowa has no hope of once again becoming an education leader.

Whether it is Common Core or another initiative taken to improve education results, Iowa needs to get its education system back under control — and quickly — before we slip further behind the rest of the nation in education quality.