Backers of the common-core academic standards have worked for years to secure the support of a diverse collection of elected officials, academic scholars, and school employees. Now they're ramping up efforts to court a different and potentially critically important audience: parents. A number of national organizations are churning out written and online materials, videos, and even public service announcements aimed at explaining the Common Core State Standards to parents, in plain language, and building support for the new guidelines, which have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. Some of those organizations, including the National Parent Teacher Association, are also staging workshops for parents in schools, community centers, churches, colleges, YMCAs, and other settings around the country. The PTA, which has 5 million members, says that it has already sponsored presentations for about 35,000 parents and members of the general public. Another organization engaged in the parent outreach, the Council of the Great City Schools, in Washington, plans to produce written guides to the standards, called "parent road maps," in 10 languages--including Korean, Russian, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and Mandarin--spoken in the districts it represents. Road maps in English and Spanish are already circulating in the big-city districts served by the organization. As those efforts roll forward, the organizations are also tailoring their messages to address parents' fears and misgivings about the common core: that its standards are too high or too low, that it will skew test scores or hurt students' academic progress, or even that it will hinder their chances of getting admitted to college.