So even though Governor Perry is making some headway, but it's not good enough for you, we should just cast him aside and wait for some perfect savior who has yet to arrive?
Right fight, wrong solution, headed in the wrong direction. Imagine this tool in the hand of a leftist, STATE control of thought. If you think that is headway, you are on the wrong forum.
Think of what would be necessary to hand control of American education to the UN. The key would the establishment of control points and then handing said control up the chain. That is EXACTLY what Perry is doing here. This move of Perry's hardly qualifies as "smaller government," as administration of these tests is taken from the hands of local authorities, however much you may dislike them individually. Instead of establishing competing customer driven standards, he is setting up a system that pleases only the autocrat.
Perry is pulling exactly the same ruse that Bush did: qualifying as a conservative by TALKING God and country, while at the same time inculcating the power of the State, which is easily handed over to those you would not find at all so pleasing. This was the same mistake as falling for the PATRIOT Act, which in the hands of a Janet Napoletano blathering about conservatives as a domestic threat of terrorism is rather concerning.