Common Core State Standards

[Jester]

State education chiefs and governors in 48 states came together to develop the Common Core, a set of clear college- and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. Today, 43 states have voluntarily adopted and are working to implement the standards, which are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to take credit bearing introductory courses in two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce.

-from the website's main FAQs page.

So for those of you who aren't aware, this has been the hot button issue in education over the last few years. It directly affects all facets of learning in the United States. I'd like to give a little more information on it, but this is an extremely polarizing topic, so I don't want to color any views right away.

I was just curious to see if anyone here knows a lot about it, and if so, what are some of your opinions?

[Juice]

The problem that I see with the common core standards aren't actually the standards themselves. From reading the opinions of some high school math teachers, the common core standards are actually preferred over the old state standards because they require a deeper understanding of the material, rather than memorization of silly rules and procedures.

The true problem lies in the way that these standards are being implemented. Parents, districts, and schools are forcing everyone to adopt the common core ASAP, which isn't very fair to students or teachers. Where the state once required only one standardized math test, students must now take nine, and neither the teachers nor the students are being given an adequate amount time to become familiar with the new material.

[TheMadAsshatter]

I'm not sure about the details of this stuff, but I do think I was among the last class to have the old system. In Texas you had to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which was stupendously easy every year. I never, from 3rd to 11th grade, got a score below commended (roughly equivalent to an A), and not that I'm complaining but it was primarily because it was painfully easy and the test material never evolved past like 9th grade level, even in 11th grade. And people take it so damn seriously, I actually exempted out of having to take an entrance exam at community college because of my TAKS scores, though I think my SAT score may have helped with that as well. The sad part is that I know that some people have failed TAKS.

I don't know a whole lot about the new system, other than there are a ton of individual tests. I don't know much about them other than they're harder than TAKS, though given that people actually managed to fail TAKS, I doubt that will last. I swear, since no child left behind, it seems that schools are less concerned about actually teaching people than they are about having good graduating rates, and how do they usually do that? By dumbing shit down. If what Juice said is true I'm kinda glad to hear it, but I still think that the very concept of schooling in American society is becoming more of a joke every year.

[HeySeuss]

I wouldn't expect a perfect implementation of the Common Core, but my fervent wish is that education improves in America. Hopefully, it's designed to be adaptable, because in some cases they'll need to figure out how to effectively implement it and that is easier with some flexibility and room to fix mistakes.

[Jester]

Well, the teaching to the test quality still remains, but schools have been doing that for decades. I've taken the TAKS test, as mentioned above, as well as the Louisiana and California equivalents (LEAP and CATS respectively).

The main goal of these new policies are to make sure that kids in Silicon Valley, California or the suburbs of Dallas, Texas (two of the better public school systems in the country) are on the same level as kids from inner-city New York or downtown Washington D.C. (some of the worse schools you can put a kid in).

[TheMadAsshatter]

So it's essentially like I said above. It's meant to dumb down the better places to the level of the worse places, rather than try to do the opposite. Granted, the former is easier than the latter, but the latter would make a much better difference in the long run.

[Jester]

It's a bit of a mixture would be the general consensus, but I wouldn't say it's just a dumbing down of better school systems. The standards expected of the lower schools are significantly higher than any initial standards set for them.

[mdk]

My reservation is that, ultimately, I think Common Core evolves into a budgetary principle. School admins are going to have to focus on the core, and devote a disproportionate amount of money to meeting those standards. My experience with a 'core curriculum' comes from college, where I had to take (literally) rocket engineering classes in order to earn a PoliSci degree. If that seems like a waste of time, it was -- I didn't use rocket science once. Of course I never used polisci either, but whatever.

Point being, NCLB sort of demonstrates to me that federal education solutions have unforeseen negative impacts on the actual students. I think privatization responds better to local and personal needs than federalization, so to me, this is a step in the wrong direction. But a slim majority of teachers reportedly like the idea, and I guess in the broad sense, not a lot of bad things can come from teaching more maths, so I guess we'll see.

[Revans Exile]

In common core the Declaration of Independence has been boiled down to nothing more than a Dear John letter.

It's garbage that should be destroyed and whatever idiot came up with should be forcibly lobotomized without any sedatives.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I don't know about common core specifically.

However generally I find the issue tends to be two main things.

1) They're always pushing for a one size fit's all approach. Thinking one style will work for everyone... and inevitably having a ton of people fall through the cracks as a result.

2) They focus on preparing you for something that will be 20 years old.
Essentially, they assume the world that children to grow up to be in will be the same world that they live in now. We can hardly predict what the world will be like just a few years from now let alone 20. School is going to be failing constantly if we're preparing for something that will practically non-existent when they graduate.

We'd be far better off just helping children improve in where they're strong, utilize their gifts (and some other basic life skills. Such as basic English, enough math to follow taxes and such, enough history to learn from our mistakes, enough science to not think the sun revolves around the earth or the earth is 6000 years old etc). That way everyone is trained in what they're good at which gives them a bigger chance for success than being streamlined into an outdated system they most likely don't care for regardless.