In December of 2009, Common Core Standards, then known as “college and career readiness standards,” was validated and set on track to be fully implemented in early 2010. The curriculum was originally designed with the intent to unify educational standards throughout the country and to make the United States an international competitor in the intellectual progress of students. With almost an immediate backlash from the 42 states that adopted the curriculum through state legislators and governors, the next five years of Common Cores implementation slowly dissolved from its original goal of unification. Today, Common Core Standards have morphed into state standards, but the controversy is far from over. Common Core marks the beginning of a new era in American education that is fueled by competition, motivated by money, and drowning students in a sea of standardized tests (Core Standards, 2017).  These standards often directly oppose developmentally appropriate practices for young students, and they defile the entire purpose of upper level education. Schools begin to become more focused on their schools rank and exam scores instead of fostering a curiosity and love of learning (Brady, 2012). Though Common Core may not seem as prevalent today, the structure of competition and data driven schools have fueled the destruction of the American education system. The main intent of Common Core was to improve and unify learning, however, the curriculum is actually setting the country back in becoming an international powerhouse of education. Now more than ever it is time for educators to take a stand against Common Core.

Common Core’s issues are not limited to a certain age group or a certain set of ideals. Most of those who oppose the curriculum primarily focus on the more noticeable concerns regarding middle and high school educational practices, however, in this essay the focus will be on the effect of the curriculum on early childhood education. This is an area of concern that tends to be overlooked but desperately needs to be addressed because early childhood education sets the foundation of learning for a lifetime. The most notable disparity in Common Core’s curriculum regarding early childhood students is its developmental inappropriateness of the standards set for each age group. The National Association for the Education of Young Children raised their brow at the curriculum, stating that “while there may be a research basis for their content, critical content and age validation of the Common Core has yet to be realized” (NAEYC, 2012). One often cited example of this discrepancy is the decrease in fiction texts being read at earlier and earlier grade levels, “the impact of which has yet to be fully explored” (NAEYC, 2012). The Nation Council of Teachers of Mathematics also noted the rush of implementation and prompted concern for “expectations in Kindergarten that would likely sacrifice understanding in a rush for rote responses,” which seems to be a common theme in Common Core’s determination to base academic success off of high-stakes testing (Main, 2010). The push to implement these programs and standards so quickly is one of the primary reasons early childhood educators are left out in the cold. The needs of these young students at such a vital stage in their learning carriers were disregarded in order to benefit students who were able to take standardized tests. These methods of teaching do anything but create life long learners, instead, the primary outcome is a never ending production of test-takers. Appropriate assessment is vital to the success of any curriculum, but the overwhelming amount of standardized testing set up through Common Core is detrimental to the success of a larger spectrum of students. Sir Ken Robinson notes in his Ted talk that this method of evaluation divides students into two categories, smart and dumb, and that leads a very large portion of students to believe they are inadequate (Robinson, 2010). Students are being reduced to the bubbles on a Scantron and teachers are being held accountable for these scores.

 While the curriculum has good intentions “to ensure that all children are prepared for success in college at the completion of their K–12 education,” Common Core’s many faults outweigh the idealistic benefits, especially considering the strain on teachers and the pressure placed on such young students (NAEYC, 2012). Knowing that this is the intent of Common Core, early childhood tends to be left out of the conversation because curriculum is theoretically designed based on career readiness so the standards are developed from high school to middle school and then to elementary school. This creates the “push down” effect where developmentally appropriate curriculums are forced to change for the sake of older students. At Gilbert Primary School in South Carolina, the kindergarteners are required to have the alphabet memorized and to be able to read sight words on their own by November. For some students this is their first school experience, and teachers end up having to push everything else to the side in order to meet these standards. On top of that, Kindergarteners are also taught their math and science classes completely in Spanish and they start learning to code computers by October. Most children at this age haven’t even developed the fine motor skills necessary to complete these standards, and the result is that many students are sent to remediation, which forces them to lose their confidence and interest in their school work very quickly. Even at that age students are socially aware enough to figure out who the “smart” and “dumb” kids are in the classroom, no matter how it is disguised (Frost, 2017). . The push down effect has caused a great strain on primary schools to overload their young students. In 2012, the NAEYC called early childhood educators to instead create a “push up” effect for the sake of aligning standards to natural capabilities and reasonable expectations of children today, we see that these voices were drowned out, but with the rehabilitation of state standards and the lack of an overbearing unifying national platform, educators have this opportunity yet again. 

Common Core Mathematics and English Language Arts curriculum are the only two subjects super-standardized throughout the country, which raises some key concerns for early childhood educators. With the standards being set so high in both of these subjects, many are concerned with the lack of exposure shown towards other developmentally appropriate core necessities such as Science, Social Studies, play time, and activities benefiting socio-emotional and physical development. Marion Brady noticed this lack of subject inclusion and began to depict the mindset of the politicians who created Common Core by explaining that “most people think that whatever they and the people they like happen to know, everybody else should be required to know” (Brady, 2012). Bradys’ short article in The Washington Post detailed eight major problems with Common Core that (even over the next five years since his article was published) had not changed. He goes on to establish that Common Core wrongfully attached its standards to subject matter because subjects are intended to be used as tools and teachers should be held accountable for what students learn, not how students learn. (Brady, 2012). Other highly acclaimed unions and qualified educators have also made the same claim as Brady, with substantial evidence to back it up. In their own position papers, the NAEYC and the Chicago Teachers Union both expressed that the swift implementation and little to no feedback (less than a month of it, from March 10th to April 2nd) made them even more critical of the standards that did not seem to cultivate in depth, true understanding of any subject. Common Core had well placed intentions to provide multiple pathways in order for young students to find the best way to problem solve for themselves. According to one parent, however, instead of her son finding the best way to solve his math problems with the most efficiency, her third grader nearly cracked under the pressure to learn how to tackle the same problem using every single method. His exam scores never came back as high as they were hoping them to be and the constant stream of low test score lead her son to simply give up on math entirely, and two years later she claims it still remains his least favorite subject by far. This concerned mother had done some digging into Common Core as this was going on and she remarked “Common Core claims to prepare children for future careers, but an employer will never care how many different ways you can reach a solution, they only care that the solution is reached” (Anonymous, 2017). Parents, teachers, and professionals all see this major flaw within the curriculum, but even after all these years, nothing has been done to change it. Considering that Common Core’s entire platform is based off of career readiness, the idea that the curriculum is actually training students in direct opposition of how an employer would request them to perform proves that career readiness is not their goal at all. It all boils down to testing, test scores, standardized testing, data, money, funding, exam monopolies, SATs, ACTs, competition between schools, competition internationally, and becoming “the best” no matter the cost. Common Core has redesigned the education system to place all value in a number. A student and teacher are judged, placed, and paid based off of high stakes tests and everyone is being put to a disadvantage. Education is so much more than numbers and statistics, a childs depth of learning and extensive capabilities cannot be measured based off of how they preformed on a single exam. A test cannot measure the effort the student has given, the curiosity and love a student discovers for a subject, the mastery of a well crafted lesson, or the capabilities of a steadfast instructor; Brady states that “tests that can not evaluate complex thought, can not avoid cultural bias, can not measure non-verbal learning, can not predict anything of consequence” because no one can be summed up by a test score (Brady, 2012). For years, American education professionals have been attempting to reinvent the wheel, they try the same things in different ways in an endless cycle of stagnant improvement. We need to realize that students cannot be standardized. 

Sir Ken Robinson gave a Ted Talk about education paradigms in 2010 that stated “we are trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past” and that is exactly how Common Core has been established (Robinson, 2010). Common Core claims to prepare children for an unclear future, but it is not reasonable to claim to be preparing people for what is completely unknown. 13-year high school English teacher Jeremiah Chaffee uses the group consensus of a teacher panel to support his claim that common core curriculum is an insult to teachers and strips students of their spontaneity and creativity by forcing scripted lessons. The conditions set up in the Common Core exemplar that Chaffee describes is designed to emulate standardized testing environments, and is not conducive to active learning. While this may seem like quite a stretch from early childhood standards, the same pattern has trickled down all the way to that level. Common Core simply kills innovation within teachers and students in an attempt to create some sort of utopian educational society where everyone is completely equal. Teachers are losing the “teachable moment” that is so valuable to the success of creating life long learners. The teachable moment is hard to define but the example is given that if a child comes in off the playground with a cocoon, the children are going to be immersed in fascination of this little creature. A teacher can stop their lesson plan for the day and take this opportunity to indulge students in their curiosity, and encourage them to ask questions about the world around them. In this teachable moment a teacher could read books about butterflies, release the butterflies once they break out of their cocoon, and learn more about where these creatures come from and what they are like. With Common Core in place, however, teachers are often required to teach things at certain times and if not they are generally so overloaded with expectations they are unable to stop and take advantage of the opportunity. Even as the lesson goes on, the little minds will be wondering about their new discovery, and they wont focus on the lesson hardly at all. Common Core is not standardizing education, it is standardizing students, forcing them all to think the exact same way. Students should spend their time in the public education system expanding their minds and exploring their humanity instead of reading and regurgitating information over and over again, always grazing the surface of knowledge but hardly ever actually gaining any.

One of the few reasons behind this standardization is the ultimate goal of being a top ranking nation on international examinations. The United States currently ranks 27th on this list, and we are killing ourselves to make it to the top, but it is completely unnecessary. Brady explains:  

“At the insistence of policymakers, and unlike other countries, America tests every kid — the mentally disabled, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, the transient, the troubled, those for whom English is a second language. That done, the scores are lumped together… when the scores of the disadvantaged aren’t counted, American students are at the top.”

The fact that this was hardly taken into account before a curriculum was dreamed up is more than disappointing (Brady, 2012). The policy makers, governors, and legislators that fast tracked an under researched curriculum for their selfish pride- unrepentant of the consequences children would have to suffer. The pressure this created to succeed is pushing schools to take drastic measures when teaching their children. Exams are given almost more than curriculum is taught and the love of learning and the curiosity that fuels the future is slowly being killed as other subjects are forced out of their place to supplement the insurmountable amount of requirements created for mathematics and English language arts curriculum. With the immense amount of confusion during the implementation of the program students were put at a disadvantage for their teachers having no way to prepare them for the exams that determined their academic worth. Teachers tend to teach the way they learn, and this process aimed to make any teacher indistinguishable from the next. Common Core undermined the professionalism of teachers and then ignored the basic needs of early childhood students. 

All in all, the biggest impacts Common Core left on Early Childhood Education students regarded standardized testing, unhealthy academic competition, the “push down” effect, and the loss of the teachable moment. Common Core has hidden itself under the guise of State Standards, and after its heavy ridicule its hoping to pursue the curriculum further under this new disguise. The problems that Common Core created will not go away unless they are addressed and now is the best time to address them, while the curriculum is trying to fade into the background. This is the time where educators will have the loudest voice, and when the biggest changes can be made. Early childhood education is the foundation of all learning, and if we do not attempt to stand up for our children now, then when will we?
