The Pros And Cons Of Common Core

There is a new puzzle to be solved in the education system. Teachers and parents are desperately trying to work together in hope of completing this nationwide puzzle. The picture is coming out to be a pretty one; however, there are still a lot of questions to be answered and a lot of missing pieces to be put together. Common Core causes a lot of mixed feelings in teachers and parents. Some hate it, some love it, some don’t care for it. It has not been easy to change from one education system to another. A huge amount of money, time, and human resource have gone into creating this new system. Was it worth it? Although it may improve the learning experience of thousands of kids, it does cause headaches in parents that grew up in the old-fashion

Nathan Burroughs, a research associate at the Center for the Study of Curriculum, along with Professor William Schmidt, state, “The new focus should shift the teaching of mathematics from a ‘spiraled curriculum’ approach, in which too many topics are shallowly covered year after year, to one in which a few important topics are mastered at each grade level” (Burroughs & Schmidt, 2013, p. 54). Basically, math before the Common Core was hectic. Teachers gave a bunch of rules that students had to memorize for the test. They never fully understood why the rules worked, but it resulted in the right answer and that's all the student and teacher cared about. Nancie Atwell, winner of the 2015 year’s Global Teacher Prize, believes Common Core is responsible for taking away the teachers' autonomy, ability to respond to who their students were, and what was going on in their classroom (qtd. in World's best teacher’s too much testing warning, 2015, p. 7). She believes Common Core doesn’t have any originality in the lessons, but that's completely false. Mathematics professor Alan Schoenfeld, demonstrates how the Common Core intends to do the complete opposite. He states, “The FAL lesson plan suggests that the teacher respond to the student work not by assigning scores, but, instead, by creating a set of questions that address the issues revealed by what the students have written” (Schoenfeld, 2015, p.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not trying to make education harder, it’s actually making it simpler. Common Core is making a difference in the classroom. It allows the teacher to be more original in the way they teach, but it also gives them a standard to follow. It may sound contradictory, but in reality it’s just a new way of doing things. Common Core is not meant to make learning hard, it’s meant to give students different ways of solving problems so they can fully comprehend a subject. The change was bound to happen sooner or later. It has been in process for years and it has finally been accomplished. According to Susan Jolley, a highschool teacher, this movement had been in process for years, “The decades-old movement toward standardization of both students and teachers” (Jolley, 2014, 83). The effect Common Core will have on students is a positive one. It is stressful to undergo a change, but students will receive long-term effects from the Common Core. They will master the mathematical concepts being taught and have a real-world understanding. Burroughs and Schmidt said that in the past the efforts to improve education had been focused on resources and organizational structure, but with Common Core the focus was put on improving the content of instruction. The effects will last a lifetime. It is a little early to say that it has resolved all the issues of the prior education system, but it is making a notable difference. The