The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a U.S. education initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula into alignment with each other by following the principles of standards-based education reform. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The past twenty years in the U.S. have also been termed the "Accountability Movement," as states are being held to mandatory tests of student achievement, which are expected to demonstrate a common core of knowledge that all citizens should have to be successful in this country. As part of this overarching education reform movement, the nation’s governors and corporate leaders founded Achieve, Inc. in 1996 as a bi-partisan organization to raise academic standards, graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability in all 50 states. The initial motivation for the development of the Common Core State Standards was part of the American Diploma Project (ADP).

The Common Core (also core curriculum or the Core) is the University of Chicago's implementation of the Great Books program for its college. These courses cover topics in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, and sciences. It forms the general education requirements for the college and uses the Socratic method to teach critical analysis of original texts. The purpose of the Core is to provide a common intellectual experience for all undergraduate students regardless of their major. It is also associated with Chicago's highly academic culture and its reputation for rigor.

The Core was founded on the principles of educational perennialism by Chicago President Robert Hutchins and philosophy professor Mortimer Adler in the 1930s. It has been modified and expanded in order to address the accusation of deifying Dead White Men, but in essence it is still as it was originally intended: a broad introduction to the best thinkers of Western Civilization through original source material.

The tradition of general education at the undergraduate level at the University of Chicago started in the early 1920s under the New Plan proposed by Dean Chauncy S. Boucher. Boucher's stated goal was to attract intellectually stronger students to Chicago at the risk of losing its weaker and less committed ones. The first interdisciplinary science survey course for freshman was called "The Nature of the World and Man".