Common Core State Standards The number of ELLs is growing in United States schools and yet, the standards are barely changing to accommodate them. The amount of ELLs increased by 51% between 1997 to 2008, and because of inadequate standards students are being lost in the mix (Colman, 2012). The United States was founded to be a place of freedom and as the country has grown and fixed many of its problems it has become an ideal that many want. People from many other countries have grown up with the idea of the “American dream,” so people come here with their own languages and cultures and the American school system needs to reflect them. In the last few years, there have been many advances in the incorporation of ELLs into schools. Educators and administrators are learning what ELL students need and how to best accommodate them. However, in the area of common core, there are many issues that need to be addressed. The first is that the standards are made with ELLs in mind, the second is the need and lack of academic English. The third is the school guidelines put in place to fix or lessen the first two issues.
Academic English
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Social English is in most cases the first to be grasped. This is not always true of course, people learn differently and some have less trouble learning academic English. However, social English is more common which makes it difficult for ELLs to meet common core standards in the same way their peers do. This idea is summed up well in ten words, “No one is a native speaker of academic English” (Maxwell, 2013, para 1). Every student in the United States has to learn to speak in an academic manner, it is not common sense, it is something that every student will have to spend time learning. ELLs have to learn an entirely new language, while also attempting to understand an entire vocabulary that most Americans never use outside of