The Common Core

Learning Targets:

Readers should be able to define Common Core and its purpose.

Readers should be able to determine why Common Core is controversial.

Common Core is a collection of educational benchmarks for k-12 students in the United States, assessing their proficiency in English and mathematics. The goal of Common Core is to create definable, quantifiable standards to hold American students so that American education quality will vary less from state to state. The Common Core standards have currently been adopted by 41 states, with some states opting to keep their own standards of education. This is because Common Core has been a subject of much controversy and debate since its inception and implementation (Coburn, C., Hill, H., & Spillane, J. 2016).

Common Core is a controversial topic politically, practically, and conceptually. The political controversy stems from people who believe the federal government should not be involved in deciding what students are taught. This may be confusing initially because Common Core is a set of standards developed by a private group that works with state educators to develop their standards. The federal government became involved when the Obama administration created $4 billion dollars in grants in the Race to the Top program, effectively a direct federal incentive to adopt the Common Core standards. Many people believe that the federal government should not have a direct influence on the subject matter taught in classrooms. In the practical sense of the controversy, some educators claim that the standards themselves aren't up to par, or effective at accomplishing what they claim. There have been complaints about the pace of the standards being too aggressive for early childhood education and underwhelming in their results for preparing students for higher education in the STEM field, as well as providing challenging English standards for students without providing the educators implementing these standards with the resources to do so. Effectively leaving many educators feeling like the goal posts of English standards had been forcefully shifted and they were not given sufficient instruction or resources to get the children to the new benchmarks (Graham, S., Harris, K., & Santangelo, T. 2015). Beyond the political and practical controversies of common core, there are also many people who conceptually disagree with the notion of a set of educational standards for the entire nation. Some are of the belief that education should have an element of being specially tailored to the community where the student is being educated. There is definite value in learning information and skills that are relevant to your environment, and many believe that Common Core robs students of that value by giving students a general guideline built to work on a larger scale, ignoring the specific needs of certain communities.

quiz answers: c, d