Common Core was brought about to revamp and restructure the education system in the United States. The idea was that if all standards were the same across the board and all students were held to the same levels then the education system would become better. Through Common Core standardized testing has become a major thing. With Standardized testing the issue becomes not all students are made the same. One student may be a whiz at regurgitating information that has been poured into them and excel at standardized testing. But then when that same student is asked the elaborate or use something in a real life context they have no clue as to how to do so. Then you may be given another student who is incredibly gifted at applying things in a real sense and very intelligent in many aspects of schooling however they are given a test that determines whether they pass or fail and they completely bomb it because they are not good at testing because they completely freak out when being tested or their brain doesn't handle black and white answers very well. These are not the only reasons there are many combinations of these and other reasons for a child to not do well on a standardized tests. Students cannot and should not be molded into a little boxes in the education system one size does not fit all.

On paper the Common Core seems like a great set of standards. It is a great idea in theory. Making all schools and education systems uphold the same standards would be wonderful, however, Common Core neglects the fact that not all states were on the same level academically before the standard were adopted. Schools were expected to jump with both feet into the standards. This caused much stress not only for the students but for parents and teachers as well. The Common Core causes the student to utilize much more critical thinking perhaps than in the past. It is a great deal more difficult to ask a student to start doing something completely different half way through their school career. The change was basically overnight.

The YouTube video "Proof Common Core is Killing Common Sense" by the user TRUTHstreammedia uses different articles and other resources such as a video about a mom talking to a school board about the ways that Common Core has failed. She starts off with an article that has a parent sharing their child's second grade math homework. The child got the correct answer but it was marked incorrect because they didn't do it the Common Core "friendly" way. The video talk about various short comings of The Core. Math especially is greatly hardened due to the standards and techniques that are implemented by Common Core. This video as well as another video entitled "Why Common Core Math Problems Look So Weird" by user Vox. This video also describes how a math problem is worked out using Common Core techniques. Although this video appear to be more in support of what the standards are trying to do. This is allow the student to fully know and understand where the answer to their math problem is coming from. Essentially it requires the student to be able to know where this answer comes from. Which in a sense makes putting more emphasis on standardized tests completely contradictory. Students are being taught and drilled on how to learn to do the problem correctly and use the correct method to find this answer. Most standardized tests use multiple choice and bubble sheets so they can grade hundreds of tests in a fraction of the time no one is looking at the work the child is doing to see if they are using a proper method. A student who fully understands the technique taught who applies it properly and gets the right answer gets the same points as a child who may do it a different "wrong" method.

As a future teacher that may have to deal with the Common Core this frightens me. I myself experienced the Core near the end of my grade school years. Though Common Core is a great thing on paper the execution is very lacking. Its standards may be difficult for some students to follow if they are in a state that's standards before where low or nonexistent. For example in math critical thinking is a must and students are required to follow a certain way of doing the problem. To conclude common core is not what we thought it would be and therefore it needs to go.
