We have to consider that the people writing the standards have a lot of experience in deciding what in Math/English etc. should be taught and considered relevant within the subject. They are usually Ph. D level educators and have a lot of experience working with kids and school boards.

In developing these standards they consider input from community and industry leaders to gain outside opinion on what stake holders might find lacking in the current generation of students. i.e. "Why don't graduates know statistics/programming/technical writing?" Or whatever they might see lacking.

And most of the time, I agree with what they're saying. Common Core is a dramatic improvement in many ways over the previous standards and it gives realistic (but previously unheard of) goals for each grade in the major subjects.

We don't find standardized testing to be an enormous distraction. It is not an obstacle but a tool where we can take a step back and assess how well the students did compared to how they entered the classroom (last year's test). Then we can figure out why and try to improve. And even though it is unfortunately being used to guarantee funding under the abortion that is NCLB, and do stupid things like dictate merit-based pay increases, these are symptoms of the problem (legislators and administrators do not understand the processes that lead to consistent education and learning and so we waste our time spinning our wheels with trying new things and old things and just seeing what works or more often doesn't) and we are better off at least making informed decisions with data than not.