WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new survey of National Education Association members finds that opposition to Common Core has nearly tripled among rank-and-file union teachers over the last eight months.

Mike Antonucci of HotAir.com reports a new NEA survey finds “a full 29 percent of (teacher union) members do not support” the Common Core math and English learning standards. That’s a sharp increase from the 11 percent of NEA members who opposed the nationalized standards in a survey released last September.

The flip side of the survey also contains bad news for Common Core enthusiasts: Support for the standards fell from 76 percent to 71 percent, Antonucci writes.

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That has to have NEA leaders slightly concerned. They’ve been strong supporters of the Common Core experiment since it burst onto the national scene in 2010.

What are they going to do if more and more of their members turn on it?

Antonucci expects union officials will continue to support Common Core, while giving voice to members’ concerns – especially those related to Common Core-aligned standardized tests and the use of test scores in evaluating teachers’ classroom performance.

The “NEA’s response to this (latest survey) will be a more expansive version of what we have already seen,” Antonucci writes. “Since February, the party line has been to support the standards while denouncing their implementation as ‘botched.’”

(That’s not too different from the Democrats who wholeheartedly support “Obamacare” even while calling for it to be fixed.)

That nuanced position might be tricky to maintain if more NEA members turn against the standards, as seems likely to occur.

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Earlier this month, the Chicago Teachers Union – an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (an NEA competitor) – passed a resolution opposing Common Core.

The takeaway from all this is that the Common Core experiment is continuing to crumble apart, even as states hustle to implement it.

Just a year ago, Common Core seemed as unstoppable as powerful locomotive chugging down the tracks.

But now there have to be some serious concerns among supporters that this entire enterprise could jump the tracks and result in the biggest K-12 policy train wreck Americans have ever seen.