"They're definitely going to be adopted," said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy organization.

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization founded in Boston in 1988 by Lovett C. Peters.

Pioneer Institute engages in a range of advocacy efforts, including publishing white papers, conducting media advocacy campaigns and holding events.

Pioneer Institute has four policy centers:

Pioneer Institute made the case in a series of reports that the federal standards contain weaker content in both ELA and math than Massachusetts' own curricular frameworks.

A February study by the Pioneer Institute conservatively estimates that Obama's Common Core Standards will costs the states at least $16 billion - money that could be used to promote education in other ways.

In the late 1980s, Baker was hired as codirector of the newly founded Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based libertarian think tank.

Keegan has authored articles on education for Hoover Institution's magazine Education Next and blog Liberating Learning, and other conservative groups including the Manhattan Institute and the Pioneer Institute, as well as the Arizona Republic.

"It's critical to have rules and structure so kids know where they stand," said Charles Chieppo, a spokesman for the Pioneer Institute, a conservative research group in Boston that promotes charter schools.

Pioneer Institute (Massachusetts)