Is Common Core Ed Reform?

The trouble that I have with posts like this one is that I don't necessarily believe that the Common Core State Standards really have anything at all to do with school improvement in general or education reform writ large. Here in Washington State one of the loudest voices on the reform side--hi, Liv!--is also one of the harshest critics of Common Core (justifiably, IMO), and when we've been living under EALRs and GLEs for nigh-on two decades now it's hard to see CCCS as anything more than just the next iteration of a standards process that never really stops changing.

As a math guy, the piece that I don't think people are talking about enough is the idea of giving away our really good state standards in mathematics to the control of a group of people we don't know with beliefs that we may not share. The math wars may have cooled, but we may well be living that armistice moment before things blow up again. If and when they do, where will the power lie?