The federal government passes an education mandate creating national common core standards. The state of Idaho must follow these standards, but lawmakers think that the standards should be more rigorous and align more closely to Idaho’s educational needs. What is the state’s best course of action in regards to the federal government’s mandate?

The state can pass additional legislation to increase the educational standards.
The state can modify the educational standards set out by the federal government.
The state can ignore the educational standards that do not align with its curriculum.
The state can request permission from the federal government to create more educational standards.

I’ll be a junior in high school next year and i’m aiming for top colleges like northwestern university, princeton, stanford, etc. i’m worried my schedule for next year isn’t challenging enough in the eyes of top colleges. my courses next year are: ap english lit, ap psychology, english 3 hn, pre-calculus hn, us history (only offered at an average level or ap which is a 2 semester course), physics (same reasoning as us history), students in action (a class centered around volunteer work), and creative writing (i want to major in creative writing or literature). is this a “challenging” junior year? i’m on the varsity swim team and i have a part-time job so i don’t want to overwork myself. i also have limited space in my schedule and can’t take both ap us history and ap physics (both are 2 semesters). i can always take ap biology (2 semester class) and get rid of both physics and us history altogether (i’d rather take ap bio than ap physics and i can easily take physics senior year) but i’d have to take us history online because it’s a required junior class. it all comes back around to i need us history no matter what.