Well, guess I'll delete most of what I was about to post. Val has summarized it succinctly.
But here are some of my additional thoughts on the general topic:
Having grown up in a military family it was sad to see kids coming from other school systems being held back a year because where their dad was stationed had standards almost a grade behind my school's standards. Having a target that works from state to state makes sense to me. At some point having a clear content collection across topics that shows how a typical college bound student can get a sufficiently rich education so that the professors don't go off whining about the quality of incoming students makes sense. Personally, I'm a little concerned that there isn't an identified basic skill track that parallels the common core's college bound track, but that's a different topic.
