The Importance Of Common Core Standards In School

Superior Essays
While most people are aware of common core, there is confusion as to what it is and how it will help our children in school. The idea of common core state standards were considered in 2007 during a forum by CCSSO (Development Process). In 2009, the government started to offer financial incentives to states to sign up for the common core standards. The grant known as Race to the top got 49 states and territories to sign up for the standards sight unseen (Wood). By 2010, the final draft was done and common core began to be implemented into the schools. Now in 2014, 43 states still follow common core standards (Development process). While there were high hope around common core, it has proven to be a failure. There is and will continue to be problems circling around common core as there are no clear boundaries of what is being expected of our youth. There is a plethora of supporters for common core. Their focus remains on how well common core will benefit our youth. They state that even though untested before implemented, it will get our youth ready for college. Furthermore, they claim that it provides the skills needed for a more complex thinking strategy and the ability to work as a team player (Karas). Additionally, they protest that because standards are bench- marked it will be easier to raise our national average by comparing it internationally . Finally, they claim that it will lower costs for testing, scoring and reporting over all (Meador). Common core has been made to sound like a panacea for the United States’ educational crisis. The sad fact remains that common core was never going to be a success in our school system. Too many problems had been overlooked while being formulated and implemented. When the supporters talk about college readiness, they forget to mention that there is only standards on language arts and mathematics . There is more to college than language arts and mathematics (Karas). Reading is no longer used as a form of entertainment or enjoyment for children in school. They are instructed to read for information. Children are provided with excerpts that reduce the importance of the context (Wood). There is a need to replace the textbooks to fit with the new curriculum. It is also the schools responsibility to provide the books for their students (Wood). As Paschal stated Common core was not leveled across the board. Math is narrowed down, while the rest of the curricula is vague (Karas). With a vague curricula there is a rising need for team work. …show more content…
Supporter credit the team work to common core. They also claim that common core will increase critical thinking in the students. Sadly, most parents noticed their children’s grades decreasing. Parents stated that they have seen a change in their children’s self-esteem since common core was implemented (Barclay). How is this truly benefiting America’s youth? The mathematics curriculum is complicated. It takes a simple math problem that should only have three steps to the solution and turns it into a fifteen-step process. Is this what pro common core view as critical thinking? There has been a great deal of emphasis placed upon common core’s ability to increase the national average because of its comparable bench- marking internationally. Five of 23 validation committee members whom would not endorse the final standards because there was no proof to compare the average too (Stergios). The real problem with common core’s bench-marking is that prior to implementing it, no state was on the same standards. This has led some states average to increase while other states have had a decrease (Famer). So it seems that the standards meet in the middle to give a unified average. Common core brings the educational state standards to an even playing field; this change is not for the better. Finally, there is the problem with monetary issues. Supporters of common core claim it will lower costs on testing, scoring and reporting (Meador). This may be true over the course of years the savings will start to show, however, during the early phases of implementing common core there are expenditures most schools didn’t realize when first signing up. Since most of the testing will be online, there will be a need for

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