Common Core Flaws

What determines how well a student is doing in school? Most people would agree that the answer to this question is how good that student’s grades are. However, does making good grades always mean that they are learning the material that is provided? What seems to matter now is making the grades necessary to graduate from high school, get into a good college, graduate again, and from there proceed to get a good job and so on. It is a game that everyone plays in order to be successful in life; how you achieve those grades isn’t important. Schools should be focusing on students actually learning, and not competing to see who can get the best grades.

In the past few years, the education system has made an attempt to expand how students are learning,

they called this new idea Common Core. “The standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live” (“Psych Today”). By doing this, they hoped that most students across the United States would be at the same level by the time they all reached college. Common Core started officially in 2009, and came as a surprise to upcoming students on how their curriculum would soon be taught to them. One of the main focuses of Common Core is critical thinking, this concept alone seemed to change the way math and english/language arts were being taught. For example, answers to questions regarding english/language arts aren’t as straightforward anymore. They require more in depth thought and they aren’t able to be pulled right from a book or text. When it comes to math, word problems are used more in an attempt to demonstrate how more advanced mathematical skills could be applied to real life situations. They also try to apply such skills towards future careers that a student may be interested in.
Although the idea of Common Core seemed to be useful when it first was launched, teachers and students soon discovered its many flaws.

One of the main issues with Common Core was how it was and still is being taught. The actual intent is now blurry because every teacher teaches differently and has interpreted it in their own way. This applies especially to those teachers who dislike Common Core and find it unnecessary to try and fit their given standards. Common Core itself has created more standardized tests than our education system has ever provided over the course of a school year (“Psych Today”). The problem with standardized tests is that there is no room for complex thought, can’t account for non-verbal learning, and unable to avoid cultural bias. (“Preparing America’s Students for Success”) Along with the increase of standardized tests, the weight of them towards a student’s education has increased as well. This has created an outburst from the students who are currently going through this newly developed curriculum. Students believe that having a standardized test account for how ready they are for college simply isn’t fair. The most common way that teachers seem to prepare their students for these standardized tests is by repetition which is a form of memorization. They have them take multiple practice tests in order to “prepare” them for what to expect during a test. This is ironic because Common Core was designed to abandon the old emphasis on memorization and

repetition and focus more on teaching thinking skills (Willingham, Daniel).
Common Core had the intentions of being a great program to broaden the horizons of the students, however it has only made things worse. Instead of trying to make all students learn the same way, we should be focusing on each individual student and their own learning styles. Our education system hasn’t changed much since it was created, and it is believed to be because we as a society are stuck in our ways. We found one system that seemed to work at one point in time, and have stuck with it and it is most definitely out of date (Ojalvo, Holly). Each and every student learns differently. Whether it be at a different rate, a higher or lower difficulty, or even learning material that you may never need in life. If we are being honest, not everyone who is in a calculus or physics class is going to use that material on a day to day basis; and that is what Common Core is trying to make students believe. Our education system should be more determined to provide a unique education in order to prepare students for life outside of school (“Knowledge of Today”).
In order to accomplish a more successful way of learning, we need to stop putting students in the one standard fits all category (Willingham, Daniel).

Like mentioned before, everyone has different goals in life, and learns differently. Therefore putting students in one big category pretending that we can force them all to learn the same way just doesn’t make any sense. Basic skill sets should still be required to get a good foundation in place for whatever it may be you want to pursue later on, anything past that should be up to the students and parents’ discretion. By preparing sooner for a future career, this will be a huge advantage once a student reaches college. Rather than them being completely blindsided by the new curriculum to come in college. Expanding how students learn would be a huge benefit to them, and could cause an increase of motivation to go to school (Willingham, Daniel). That is one of the main problems with our education’s structure today, is that students have little to no motivation anymore. Many of them feel that the repetition of going to the same classes, five days a week from kindergarten to twelfth grade gets boring and turns them into somewhat of a robot just trying to get through the day. Students should be excited and ready to proceed in the right direction towards a career that intrigues them. By learning skills that students need in life, they will continue to remember them for times in which they will need them. For example, most students

don’t remember dates in a history class, but they remember their locker combination. Why? Because most people, once out of that particular class, don’t need to know those dates anymore. However, they need to know their locker combination in order to get into their locker every day for the next four years if not longer. Examples such as these demonstrate how people only retain the information that is useful to them and can be applied to their daily life.
Our education system should be focusing on working with kids and helping them developing expertise on a certain subject, regardless of what the subject may be (Ojalvo, Holly). Advanced skills are valued in real life situations and in various career fields. Common Core doesn’t teach anything like that. When students know material well enough and are able to apply it to different situations, they feel as though they have succeeded. Success is one of the best forms of motivation. When someone knows they’re doing well, they tend to feel more motivated to continue doing that task.This is another reason why standardized tests don’t work, because they only make students feel as though they are ignorant when that isn’t the case. Which then kills their motivation.
All in all I think that it is very known that today’s education system is way out of date, and that Common Core is doing a poor job at attempting to improve it. Instead of dealing with these set standards that we know aren’t working, we should be working on how to change and improve our education. If teachers and students came together there would be a better chance at making a big change. It will still take time to change these things, just like anything else, but it's better to start somewhere than to do nothing at all.