When I was in first grade, I learned something about my self.  Figured out that I wanted to be a teacher. Fast forward a few years to when I was in high school, I was a nanny for four years. Working and teaching those kids made me realize that I wanted to be in the early childhood education field. Now I'm in school and doing what I love but is as I'm learning more and more, I see a major problem with our school system that has been around for a few years now, the common core.  What is the common core you may ask? Well the common core was designed by state education chiefs and governs to make this government regulated set standers on what should and should not be taught in the schools. According to the Common Core State Standers Incentive, it is a set of clear college and career-ready standard for kindergarten through 12th grade in English and Mathematics. Only 42 out of 50 states use this set of standers to this day. The Common Core State Sanders Incentive states "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". This is their reasoning for this 2009 adopted set of standers but the question being examined in this paper is if it the best for our school systems or is it just making its harder not only for the kids, but for adults too?

All States have the choice to practice these standers and if they choose to have them, they can change them how ever they feel necessary. Five of the seven states that do not currently have the common core, have never had it in the state. One (South Carolina) has repealed it and one (Minnesota) has only adopted the English common core standers. Fourteen around of the states that practice these standers have tired to repeal the common core standers but have failed due to not enough votes. Some governors of call this a "failed program" like Mississippi's Phil Bryant but other states, like Wisconsin, have gotten these new standers and chose to kept it due to the fact that they had already spent so much of tax payer's money to change the curriculum to the common core to drop it so quickly. About eight states that practice it have changed some of the standers to better fit their states needs and all the rest of the state have had very little struggle with the change. The government has given so much money for school to switch to this system so they can buy new technology like IPads to "help" students learn these new standers. It seems like even though this isn't a government pushed idea, they still have a big persuasion with this topic. Rick Hess, who is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies, says, "This was unusual in that it wasn't at all debated, even though it was big and national in scope, because people were just excited about the chance of being eligible for a chunk of $4 billion." (Hess) Along with Hess saying how the state didn't question it because of the money, Erick Erikson (a father and an editor for fox new) agreed by saying "With the federal government pouring money into states to get them to adopt Common Core standards, there will be strings attached to develop a national education standard that replaces local values for one size fits all." The common core was meant to make all state have equal learning levels so school can compare themselves to one another across the state but it has now been tarnished because the state and government pick and choose what they want from the common core and what they don't.

Figure 1 (Education Week 3/6/2011)Figure 1 (Education Week 3/6/2011)Most people would be thinking "why is this such a big concern?" and "how could this be that bad of a program?" Well once many parents and teachers saw the "new" way of teaching math to the kids, they got confused. The common core has change many of the ways we solve every day problems. Now with multiplication, they want the kids to look at it differently. When I see 5x3 I think of it as 5+5+5=15. According to the common core that is not wright. Silly right. Well the common core wants the kids to look at it as three in five groups (3+3+3+3+3=15). It's small change but it has kids getting answers marked wrong because they didn't solve it the "new" way. Along with the change to multiplication, they are changing they way kids solve addition and subtraction problems. If you look at figure 1 you can see the "old fashion" way vs the "new" way. It is a very complicated way to now work out these problems. The common core is trying to teach kids how to round up to the number and solve it that way. For example, lets take that problem as shown. It's 32-12. You will start off by taking the lowest number and around it up to the closest 5 or 10 variable so in this case, you would want to get 12 to 15. Adding 3 will get you to 15 (12+3=15). After that, you would add 5 to 15 to get it the number to 20 (15+5=20). then you would add 10 to 20 to get you to 30 (20+10=30). Once you are at the closest variable of 5 to your number you are trying to get to (32), you would just add what is left to get there. In this case it would be 2 (30+2=30). Now that you are at the number you are subtraction from, you will add up all the number you used to get to this number which will leave you with the answer 20 (3+5+10+2=20). This has many parents and teachers upset because of this longer and very tedious process. This was change to this way to help the children when they get to more advance levels of mathematics, like algebra, but is this confusion worth a little push towards a slightly easier math in the future? 

In the English department for the common core, it focuses on knowledge in other content areas, staircase of complexity, text-based answers, writing from sources, academic vocabulary, and balancing informational & literary text. Not only that, they are pushing the students to think more critically. When the kids read a story, it wont ask simple questions like "what color was the girls dress?", but it will ask questions like "why did the girl wear a yellow dress?" the only problem with that is everyone interprets stories different which will make room for more varied answers unless the story specially says. 

Most parents are outraged at these changes that the common core has made. Many of them do not have a clue what to say to their kids when they come up to them and ask for help on their homework and see these problems that they have no clue how to work out anymore. If the parents show them how to work it out, the children grades suffer because its not this "new" way. The popular comedian Louis C.K. has a now famous rant on the common core and standardized testing. He has gone on David Letterman talking about how he seen these struggles first hand when helping his kids and he even tweets "My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!" (Louis C.K. @louisck Apirl 24,2014). Parents like Erickson have tired to see the positive aspects in this but once they have gotten a good look at it, they are just disappointed. Erikson goes on to say "My gut was to support Common Core. It makes sense. As someone who grew up overseas and moved back to the U.S. in high school, I see the benefit of common grade level standards. But I have a second grader who is being subjected to Common Core. And I see first hand that Common Core is deeply devastating and I now understand the rage of so many people." (Erikson) This shows that even people who go in to this topic with an open mind just end up not agreeing with these new methods. Erickson continues to say "Growing up, I was an A student in math. My wife did quite well in math. We have a second grader whose Common Core math assignments make no sense." (Erikson) he then goes on to say "And it is one in a long line of failures designed by the education elite who keep using our children as guinea pigs in new ways to teach thousand year old subjects. Math should be math, not an essay. English should be Shakespeare and Faulkner, not Holocaust denial." (Erikson) 

Along with parents, teachers have very many things to say about the common core. As an education major, I hear about this subject almost on a daily basis. I have heard many opinions and all of them are very stronger for which ever said they're a fan of. Most teacher love learning new theories and teaching styles. They are educators and they love to gain more knowledge, but when they got these new common core strategies, this is where they vary on responses. With this topic, teachers are very much spilt down the middle weather they are for it or against it. Half of the teacher are excited for this and are ready for this new way of teaching to see how it shapes the way kids learn from it. For others, they see it as a more impractical way for teaching and learning. They think that it is messing up the growth and development in younger students and ruining the way that Lev Vygotsky and Jean Paige wanted kids to grow and develop. "Play is the source of development and creates the zone of proximal development ...  in play a child is always above his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he was a head taller then him self." (Vygotsky) As you can tell form that quote, Vygotsky's studies say that kids learn through play and with the common core has besmirched it. Along with that, Piaget says that "Children have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them something too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves." (Piaget) The common core has the set standers that have to be met at the end of the year for standardized testing and its now pushing the teacher to try to rapidly teacher the material which does not benefit the children at all. These common core standers make teacher throw out everything they learned in their schooling just so they can keep their job. Special ed teacher, Mechelle DeCraene-Gilford states "Why are our school leaders putting dollar amounts on development? Not everyone achieves developmental milestones at the same rate." (DeCraene-Gilford) She references Piaget's and his theory on how all kids develop at different rates. She then goes to end her article with this great line that most teacher would agree with "So what would Piaget say about Common Core? Honestly, I imagine he would chuckle." (DeCraene-Gilford) Other teachers think that the common core has good points but it just needs to be reworked to better suit the school system. Retired teacher Barbara Landenberg stated "Why are standards bad? I'll bet your doctor has standards. I'll bet your architect and your lawyer have standards  ...  please, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Fix the Common Core  --  don't throw it out." This would be a great thing for schools to do and help fix many of the problem with the common core. You can see the strong concern from the teacher on this subject, then you should know that something is wrong with these set standers.

Figure 3 (LA Times)Figure 3 (LA Times)Figure 2 (LA Times)Figure 2 (LA Times)In an article from the LA Times, they have put together some statics on the effect of the common cores for standardized test. In these bar graphs they show the percentage of children that were at or above proficiency. They got results from 2012 in New York and compared them to the 2015 results (figure 2). As you can see, math in New York has gone down more than 30% since practicing the common core and English has dropped about 20%. Those are very dramatic changes in scores. The LA Times not only show the New York statistics, but it also includes Connecticut's too. In Connecticut's performance with out common core were most impressive with being above 78% in mathematics, above 80% in reading, and above 89% on writing in 2012. As of New York's, Connecticut scores (figure 3) did see a dramatic decrease in their school in 2015. Mathematic went down to below 40% and ELA (writing and reading got combined that year) went down to below 56%. Even when you average out the reading and writing scores from 2012, their is still about 30% drop in the scores. This shows that the common core is not only making the learning more tedious and confusing for everyone, but it is also dropping our testing score across the Untied States. 


The common core has not been the best education decision for our country. When most parents and teacher has so many issues with these stander, and many states changing them and trying to repeal them, it should be a big indicator that we should just end it or at least rework it. The government had hopes that it would increase tests score but in reality, if just made them vastly drop. These standers go against all of the philosophers I've learned about in my education classes and it makes it more tough to do what you know it right for the kids when you job is on the line. 

