Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Common Core Standards

Common Core State Standards: A National Movement to Equal Education
By: Amy Stevenson

On March 10, 2010 state governors and education officials proposed new national standards for kindergarten through twelfth grade. A movement started by President Obama, the standards are proposed to improve the quality of education nationally. As of right now, these standards are strictly “voluntary” but schools are encouraged to begin using them in guiding their future curriculums, hoping that one day these standards will be mandatory.

National standards are the first step President Obama is making to better the education in the United States. The creators of The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) are the Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Operators (CCSSO). All but two states, Texas and Alaska agreed to participate and creators researched high achieving states and nations to assist with the creation of these guidelines. Currently, each state has core curriculum content standards, guidelines, assessments and programs. Students in each state are being educated differently and national standards will help to close that gap. The standards provide detailed, high achieving goals for each subject area. The language of the standards and expectations are clear- leading to fewer discrepancies. For example: “In reading seventh grade students are expected to be able to analyze how particular lines of dialogue or specific incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character or provoke a discussion.” This standard is very clear, concise and easy for a teacher to translate and connect to their lesson planning.

The negative side to the creation of national standards comes from a state such as Texas, who already argues that their state standards exceed the national standards created. Parents argue that more standards will affect the uniqueness of their child’s learning abilities and create a rigorous time line for students to meet learning goals- students will not be allowed to learn at their own pace. Others argue that math and literacy heavily weighted and physical education and fine arts subject areas are ignored. These concerns from educators will be presented to the CCSSI in and effort to let the public weigh in. The first draft of the common core standards will be open for public comment through Friday, April 2, 2010 at www.corestandards.org.

1 comment:

  1. The common core standards initiative actually predates Obama. For example, see the NGA/CCSSO/Achieve report, "Benchmarking for Success." This report is dated December 2008, which is before Obama took office - and it obviously reflects a lot of prior effort up to that time. It is true that Obama has aligned his initiatives to the effort, but this is a case where the states acting together are actually leading the way, and the fed is trying to give incentives to make it happen.

    ReplyDelete