ELA Common Core State Standards

Since Washington adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in 2011 and then fully implemented into schools in the 2014-15 school year, the standards have been a hot-button topic ever since.  I was a freshman in high school when Common Core became the talk of the crowd and people had mixed feelings about the topic; some people hated the standards, some felt they were heaven on earth, and many were somewhere in between and felt torn over the subject.  As a 15-year-old, I didn’t really have too much to say about CCSS because I didn’t know much about the standards and felt I couldn’t speak about what I didn’t understand fully.  I just knew Common Core was a set of standards and benchmarks students of all grade levels were going to be expected to meet.  Then, my mom went back to school to become a middle-level math teacher and I learned a lot more about what Common Core actually is when she was going through her education classes and edTPA process.  She was able to help me understand that Common Core is meant to help guide teachers when it comes to helping students achieve the benchmarks set by the standards, but it doesn’t tell teachers how to teach their students.  Therefore, I found the “Myths vs. Facts” to be a very helpful section when it comes to finding out what’s true and what’s false about Common Core.  With many different rumors spreading, the best thing to do would be to learn as much as possible about the standard because it seems like, since people aren’t all on the same page about the standards, the implementation and discussions turn into a mess.  I believe Common Core is a great idea on paper, however, some implementation hasn’t exactly been the best in my opinion.  Much like what happened with “No Child Left Behind,” the initiatives were put together with good intentions, but the process was rushed and finalized too fast.  I like the idea of certain benchmarks students are expected to meet but should be more student-paced rather than teacher-paced.  As stated in the article, “The needs, abilities, knowledge base, and interest of teachers and students vary from school to school, from classroom to classroom, and even within every classroom – they cannot be standardized” (8).  So, while Common Core doesn’t tell teachers how to teach subjects, it can cause confusion when it comes to drawing the line between standardization and holding high standards, as Beach, Thein, and Webb pointed out in their book.  And I believe Common Core needs to be revisited to determine if the standards are the best for our students’ success.

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