The United States is working at improving their global ranking in education.  The United States wants our education system to be more unified and the Common Core Standards could help us unify education throughout the states.  The Common Core State Standards provide a clear set of standards that every child should know and when they should know it.  "The Common Core, adopted by most states, does not constitute a federal curriculum or mandate specific readings.  But it does spell out skills that children should learn by different grade levels and general education principles" (Carr).  Common Core Standards are new education standards that were made to be more rigorous and to help prepare students better for college and careers.  In an article written by Kelly Petty that states how parents feel about Common Core states "Common Core State Standards were intended to focus on providing what supporters say is rigorous and in-depth coursework in language arts and mathematics so students leave school with a deeper understanding of the concepts and prepared for college and the workforce." (Petty)  The Common Core Standards clearly lay out where students should be in English and Mathematics.  Common Core Standards are also made to erase the gap between the education levels of each state.  A child's education highly depends on where they live.  A child can move from one school to another and they could be behind.  A child can be in the top of their class in one school and then be way behind in another school.  Common Core Standards would help solve this problem.  Every school will be on the same track and it will tremendously help students who have to move in the middle of the school year.  This is one of the good things that will come from Common Core.  There are many great proponents to Common Core but there are some areas where it could use some work.  While implementing the Common Core Standards into schools, they should look at creativity and student success.

Teachers come up with creative activities to do in the class every day.  Common Core Standards may take some of this away.   The standards are more rigorous which will mean teachers will have to take more time for explaining.  When so much time is spent on teaching the information, it takes away the time that they would be playing or doing an activity.  In the scholarly book "Play at the Center of the Curriculum", they go in depth why play is important.  The authors state, "Until this equilibrium is achieved, the child's intellectual activity is always bound within the larger domain of play because, not being able to form an objective, reliable, and suitable view of the world, there is always a subordination of the world to the child's immediate view.  In a sense, because children make of the world what they wish, we say that children are bound by play, where work and practice are tied to pretense, fantasy, and imitation".  (Alward)  Children learn by playing.  Play is a child's job and this is how they learn best.  When children are in centers, it is almost like play to them.  They have a job to do while they are in their center, but they are having fun.  They are most likely going to remember this than what the teacher had up on the board.  This is an important part of the learning process and gives them a chance to express themselves.  Common Core will take away time from this and the children will suffer from is.  The teachers will be more focused on them passing the test so they will spend more time trying to cover everything instead of making sure they understand the concepts.

Teachers are also not having their students do as much creative writing anymore.  In New Orleans at Belle Chasse Elementary they used to write about their personal experiences.  They would write about their ideal vacation and about what they want to do over spring break. (Carr)  This is not happening as much now because of Common Core.  Common Core Standards will soon be taking this out of many elementary schools.     At Belle Chasse Primary School the students "More rarely writes stories or essays based solely on his experience or imaginative musings anymore. Instead, it's all about citing 'textual evidence'. (Carr)  This is a very different approach from what these students are used to.  This will be helpful for the students to learn at an early age but it should not be the main focus at this age.  They need to be able to create stories and write about what they want to write about also.

The lack of creativity will affect student success.  Children learn the best when they can associate it with something.  Children learn how to say their ABC's by singing a song, how to tie their shoes with a rhyme, and practice cooking and cleaning through play.  If children learn these things so well through creativity then why not continue teaching them that way.  We see that this is working so why change.  We need to add more creative activities to the classroom not take them away.  It is like proving that you have found a cure for cancer and then not giving it to people with cancer.  It is proven that children need to play and that they learn through play so that is what they need to do.

When people envision a classroom they think about each student sitting in a desk with the students in rows all facing the white board where they envision the teacher.  This is not how it needs to be though.  The students should be sitting in groups and interacting with each other.  The University of Carnegie Mellon did research on group work in a classroom and they found, "Group projects can help students develop a host of skills that are increasingly important in the professional world.  Positive group experiences, moreover, have been shown to contribute to student learning, retention and overall college success." (Benefits of group)  Students can figure out more complex problems when they are working in a group.  When a child is faced with a harder problem and asked to complete it alone, it can be overwhelming.  They will decide they cannot do it and give up.  When they are working with their classmates they can all combine what they know and figure it out together.  It is a learning experience for them and the way a classmate explains something can help them understand a concept they did not understand.  Group work can be a good tool to use in a classroom as long as it is done correctly.  Group work can help a student succeed in a classroom.

Student success is one of the main focuses in education.  Student success is one of the major goals of Common Core but they are going about it all wrong.  They are putting too much of an emphasis on the standardized test.  Teachers feel like they must cover every subject so they do not go as in depth as they should.  Teachers are going through the topics on jet skies and not taking their students scuba diving.  Schools have been required to give standardized test sense 2002 when the No Chlid Left Behind Act was passed.  Every State was required to come up with their own benchmarks in language arts and mathematics under this act and they were widely varied.  (Lahey)  Now under the Common Core Standards they have to get new tests that match up with the new standards.  According to New York Times, "New York was one of the first states to match up standardized tests with the Common Core State Standards, and last week's testing was the second year students sat for Common Core-aligned tests.  Scores fell last year, as might be expected because of the greater rigor inherent in those exams, which caused a lot of anxiety among educators." (Lahey)  There is a lot of emphasis put on this test trough out the year and it can be stressful for the students.  The students also do not see why these test are important because they are not part of their grade.  They do not see them as important and this can affect the teachers.  Teachers get evaluated on how well their students do on the standardized test so there is a risk if their students do not take it seriously.  In some states promotions and teacher salary reflect the test scores which are supposed to show student success which is supposed to reflect how well they are doing their job.

Parents are worried that Common Core Standards will affect their children's success in school.  Parents want their children to do good and come home with good grades.   They see this change as a danger to that.  Common Core is a more rigorous set of standards that the children are not used to.  The students will have to put in a little more effort in the Common Core Standards and if they do not then their grades will reflect it.  Parent see what is going on right not, which according to Petty is "Common Core in South Carolina hasn't gotten much fanfare from parents frustrated over their children's academic performance and worried they are seeing a complete federal takeover of education that standardizes learning and limits creativity." (Petty)  Many parents are so focused on the fact that almost all of the states are adopting these new standards and how it does lack creativity to see that if it is changed a little then it could ultimately help their children.

Overall Common Core State Standards are a good idea.  They help cover the gap between education in the different states.  Common Core State Standards help keep a strong focus on what they need to be covering in class.  They do need some work though.  They really need to revise a couple things to put a bigger emphasis on creativity and student success.  There are many ways that they could go about this.  Common Core Standards just need to add some time for play and that would help them seem more appealing.  There needs to be more interactions between the students in the classroom and not just the teacher at the front of the class.  Children can learn a lot from each other if we give them the chance to.  Children are open-minded and see things differently than we do.  A concept that is simple to us can be hard for them to wrap their mind around.  If we allow them to have more time to work on activities then these harder concepts can be understood by them.  Common Core just needs to allow more time for this and not focus so much on the standardized test.   This will help fix many of the problems that we now have in our education system.  I think that Common Core is a good idea and I like it there is just a few things about it that I see could be made better.  I know that it will never be perfect but I believe that Common Core will improve many of the problems that I have seen but then it will have its own problems.  We just have to think which problems are more concerned about and about what is better for the children because that is what it is all about anyways.
