In a discussion with NBC special correspondent Tom Brokaw at the Education Nation Summit in New York this week, ExxonMobil’s Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson helped cut through the fog surrounding the Common Core State Standards to discuss why they are important to our nation’s future.

Rex stressed that addressing our nation’s educational challenges begins with being able to measure progress accurately:

If you can’t measure outcomes, then I don’t know how you’re going to address where your deficiencies are. That’s the reason we are such a strong proponent of the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, because it does give us a common way to measure outcomes from state to state to state. … You cannot improve any system if you do not measure it against a consistent standard.

Improving the system is up to the individual states and local school districts. The Common Core lays out the standards that students should be expected to meet. The discretion in how to educate students in order to meet those standards is left to parents, teachers, administrators and other officials at the state and local levels. They are given the widest latitude without interference from the federal government.

Rex and Tom Brokaw touched on a variety of educational issues, including the challenge of making the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and math – exciting to new generations of students.

Check out the whole discussion here: