In congress and state legislatures, the period between Election Day and year’s end is called the lame-duck session — a reference to the politicians who are ending their legislative careers, voluntarily or otherwise. In Ohio’s Statehouse, it’s often a time of mischief, when brazen lawmakers do lots of bad things at the last minute in the expectation that few people are paying attention.

This year’s lame-duck session in Columbus will likely include efforts by the Republican-controlled General Assembly to force local communities such as Toledo to give up their traffic cameras, to dictate to communities how they can tax themselves, to ease firearms restrictions, to make the state’s execution process less transparent, and to provide the illusion (but nothing more) that lawmakers want to clean up Lake Erie. An early test of lawmakers’ intent will be what they do with a bill that would repeal the Common Core education standards in Ohio.

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If they pass such a misguided bill, Gov. John Kasich — a supporter of Common Core — should veto it. Better yet, the governor should use the electoral mandate he gained last week to tell lawmakers of his party not to waste his time or that of Ohioans with a repeal scheme.

Ohio is one of 45 states that voluntarily adopted the Common Core standards, although a few states have since repudiated them. The rigorous standards define what students should be expected to achieve in math and English, with an emphasis on reading, writing, and critical thinking. They are designed to prepare students better for 21st-century jobs and higher education, making Ohio more economically competitive.

The assertion by detractors that Common Core is a Washington-mandated curriculum is false on both counts. The standards were developed by state governors and schools superintendents of both parties, with the participation of teachers and employers. They do not tell any school in Ohio, or anywhere else, what it must teach. Nor are standards the same as standardized tests, despite deliberate efforts to conflate the two.

The state has spent four years and millions of dollars to bring Common Core to Ohio classrooms. The standards have the backing of Ohio business executives, education leaders, teachers, and parents.

Yet attacks on Common Core remain popular among many politicians, mostly Republicans and often self-styled fiscal conservatives, who want to appeal to an extremist fringe of activists. That might not be an astute political strategy.

Karen Nussle, executive director of the Collaborative for Student Success, a Common Core advocacy group, notes that last week’s election returns identified elected officials who oppose Common Core as “outliers” nationally. By contrast, she says, “support for uniform high standards is a net plus among both Republicans and Democrats capable of articulating the case for them.”

A bill approved by a state House committee the day after Election Day would replace Common Core in Ohio with a set of standards that Massachusetts dumped four years ago in favor of Common Core. Supporters of repeal say they want Ohio to draft “homegrown” standards, but can’t define what they should include. That is, Ohio schools would have three different sets of school standards, each with its own costs, within a few years.

House Republican leaders kept the repeal bill out of the Education Committee, which includes Common Core advocates. Instead, they sent it to a different, more malleable, committee.

There evidently aren’t enough House votes now to pass the repeal bill; Ohioans should hope that situation doesn’t change, but if it does, the Senate must be prepared to kill the measure. In the meantime, publicly or privately, Governor Kasich needs to make clear his intention that Ohio will keep the useful standards in place.

First Published November 13, 2014, 5:00 a.m.