Should common core standards exist?

[10cjisoo]

"If everything that I learned in high school is a measurable objective, I haven't learned anything."

This quote is exactly what I have been thinking my whole life. This student's speech expresses the way I, and I'm sure many of my peers and teachers, have been feeling about the common core standards. I have always been angry about the fact that students and teachers are measured by how successful they are, by some big test at the end of the year. In my opinion, this system has completely defeated the purpose of school and education. School should be used to inspire students, help kids discover a career they would enjoy, allow the minds of students to be free, give children necessary knowledge to survive and thrive etc. This ridiculous system has made the actual purpose of school completely insignificant. Teachers and students are in school to fill one purpose: to pass a test. I can not count the amount of times I have a heard a teacher say something like "You'll have to know this for the regents." or "You have a test next month, so pay attention". I am so sick and tired of hearing things like this. Shouldn't teachers say something like "This is knowledge you can use for the rest of your life." instead? I know for a fact that these tests are detrimental to the way students are learning. Students have the mentality that after they pass the standardized test, they have no use for the knowledge they learned in the class anymore. We believe passing a test is our soul purpose of the class, because that's basically what we are told everyday. Teachers are forced to use a strict guideline that will help kids pass a test, so they don't get fired. It leads to kids cramming the night before the regents, so they don't have to go to summer school. Using common core standards restricts teacher's creativity and freedom while teaching, and stresses students out unnecessarily. Everyone, including teachers, knows we forget most of the things we learn in high school anyway. These tests make it seem like the classes we take have no true purpose. If we can't think of any reason as to why we are teaching children what they are learning, besides to pass a test, there is a huge problem. (Sight digression: Why don't we learn things that are actually needed in life? Like managing money or feeding ourselves?) I believe if we reduce or take common core standards out altogether, students may approach the idea of school more positively, and teachers will use unique and individualized methods to teach students. Like the student said, creativity, inquisitiveness and appreciation is why students go to school, and why teachers teach. These things are unmeasurable, yet the most important. Maybe if we focus education on allowing kids to develop these aspects, instead of preparing them for some test, the education system will be more successful. 

Of course I realize there has to be a a way to help determine failing schools and teachers, but I believe there must be better ways to do this than using common core standards. Anyway, what do you guys think? Are common core standards a necessary part of the education system, or just plain harmful?

[10sthai]

Who is this boy and can I please marry him?! I cannot express how much I agree with this video. The issue of standardization is one of the most important social epidemics that we are facing today, but it is rarely ever questioned on a serious level. Whenever I question the education system, the reaction I get time and time again, is “that’s just the way things are.” But like said in the video, WHY does it have to be this way? Education is a government run institution. If we truly live in a democracy, if our congress exists for any purpose, it is to make changes based on what the public feels they need. Today, we would never collectively respond, “that’s just the way things are” to something as blatantly wrong as, say, racism or political corruption. Why is it that we believe that education isn’t just as important an institution to reform, if clearly, most people are not happy with the education system? Education has been corrupt for so long that students are basically programmed to despise going to school as early on as elementary school. And while many teachers genuinely love to teach, there are also many who are finding teaching more difficult as more federal regulations and checks are put on them. Therefore, if both the teacher and student dislike education…then why don’t we change it? Like the video referenced, I believe that the answer lies in the roots that our education system grew from. The modern education system actually stemmed from the industrial revolution during the turn of the century. It thrived off of standardization because its chief goal was to assimilate the huge amount of foreign children coming into America. If students broke their education up into specific involuntary lessons, legislatures believed that we could mobilize a new generation of Americanized youths that all had the same values and culture. This was further influenced by the industrial factory schedule, which adopted work cycles broken up into segments that were timed, and indicated with a whistle (sound familiar?). The assembly-line method of education worked for industry, because it created the most efficient results. However, learning isn’t meant to produce or measure efficiency. In fact, learning isn’t meant to measure or grade anything at all—in theory you simply cannot quantify a person’s ability and will to learn. Just because they do poorly in the math and sciences, for example, this does not mean that a student isn’t just as capable, just as driven, and just as hard-working as someone who is good in those areas. The Common Core and other limitations on grades strip students of the most expressive and imaginative parts of themselves. Ironically, these are the exact parts that would motivate an adolescent to want to explore and learn about the world around them. By forcing all different types of students to take the same exams, it not only causes much higher levels of competition and stress, but it leaves no room for students to make mistakes. If a student is constantly getting critiqued for the work they fail to do “correctly,” then they can never understand the benefit of making mistakes and learning from them. If we are only being treated like production lines, like a means to being sold to others, like an industry rather than humans, we can never say that we are learning. Again, as the video said, learning cannot be measured. Learning is understanding how you fit into the world and how you are contributing to it. To me, students can and will learn a thousand times more from allowing their emotions and creativities to be recognized. Going to therapy, falling in and out of love, helping others in need, losing a best friend, tackling your biggest fear, tackling your biggest goals, etc. The current school environment and Common Core allows for none of these emotions, in fact I don’t think I know any student who gets both good grades, and also has time to honor their desires and goals in a freeing way. It disgusts me everyday that we have become a part of this mechanization of knowledge, without even realizing it. And that it is so ingrained into our systems that we don’t even know to question it.

[3smonica]

Common Core puts pressure on little kid, the pressure put on a daily high schooler is now being rubbed off on elementary school students.I read an article online about how a 1st grader ran home after a day of school only to do his homework, after hours of homework he never went to his karate practice which he used to love. He sat home crying because he was so stressed and tired. Just to remind you that this is a 1st grader!! When i heard this story i was disgusted in every way possible. I dont think that putting stress on little kids just for the state too look better is a way out. If people want kids to be smarter they have to stop pressuring them to standerdize tests and comparing everyone to each other. Everyone is different and works at different speeds.

[10agreco]

Common Core standards are truly ridiculous. The founding idea of this system is that students any where in the United States are learning the same thing at the same time. Therefore, if i was to move to Kansas tomorrow i would be on the exact same page of the textbook as i was in New York. Anyone who is in our school system knows that this is completely preposterous. Ask a neighbor who goes to a school a block away from you if they are learning the exact same thing you are, they are not. This is because schools offer honors courses, AP courses, and normal courses; the standards cannot be the same. Any two teachers in our school teaching the same subject will be on different topics. Areas with different moral values, religions, cultures, and ethnicities will work at different paces. Some areas of the U.S. restrict what is taught to the students, based on religious values. What I am trying to get across is the foundation of this system makes absolutely no sense. We as students are expected to meet these standards. It is sad for me to think that in certain classes a teacher wills ask how many students understand the topic, maybe ten students will raise their hand. Two thirds of the class does not understand yet the teacher says we have to move on for the regents. Wait a minute- so now school isn't even about understanding its about speeding through information for a test. Every single day i hear "you have to know this for the regent." I have seen extremely smart kids fail a regent because they are bad test takers. These students had a 95 in the class. Overall regents don't measure how well a student learns, they determine how a student studies the test format.

[10tjustine]

    I completely agree that Common Core has made school less about real education and more about testing. Adding on to the issue of the phrase, “You’ll need to know this for the regent” said by every teacher preparing students for the grand test, many students dread hearing about and prepping for the regents. When one student last year asked my math teacher how a certain topic could help us in the real world, the teacher’s response was, “I can explain after class if we have time because that won’t be on the regent.” Furthermore, many students forget great amounts of knowledge over the summer, especially everything they crammed to know for the regents in June. Many students will even admit that they could never retake a regent exam for the fear that their score will be a great deal worse. Why should Common Core force tests upon students who don’t have proper background knowledge or full understanding of a subject?
    This video is also enlightening to a student to view common core through the eyes of a teacher. It is sad to realize that the same stress to succeed that is put on students is also put on teachers. I believe that this just leads to an environment that overlooks lasting education and pressures teachers to give more tests ultimately forcing students to cram for exams. I cannot even tell you how often I dread the days in school when I have multiple tests on the same day. Even worse, I once had 3 midterms in a row and all were on their designated test day! Excessive testing is absurd and Common Core needs to find a way to do without regents and allow for creativity to lead to college and jobs.

[3kKristin]

Common Core standards have made education lot less about the individual. Common Core has turned children into numbers. All of the testing that is placed on children has made children a lot more stressed. Education has now become much less of a teaching experience. It has now become a way to test the test taking skills of children rather than their knowledge as a whole. I feel as though our lives are being taken over by this testing system. I've become much more stressed out as years go by because of the increased amount of tests and because teachers keep pushing these standardized tests. All that we learn is for these standardized tests and not for the purpose of just learning. Education is not about teaching but testing. Everything i learn is forgotten because im being taught to remember what i learn for a test. The second the test is over all of the knowledge leaves my head. I hate that i cant even enjoy my time in high school because i'm being pressured to do well on all of these standardized tests. Its taking over my life. exactly why do children need to be tested this way. I makes no sense. I know that all that we are being taught and all of the tests we take are just to place numbers on children and to categorize children, but how is this fair? It really makes me question the true view America has on children. It makes me think that we as children are just objects.

[6bvictoria]

I really really strongly agree with this statement. The education system today is more focused on regurgitating information to put on tests. Kids don’t go to tutoring to help explore their minds in the subject, they go to learn test strategies. Classes are more focused on passing the regents, giving us reference tables so we don’t have to really understand the subject, but just spewing out information to help us get a certain number grade.The amount of homework given is solely to counteract our horrible test grades that some students receive because their minds are not made to learn in a certain impenetrable environment. It is interesting to me how a certain set of numbers determines your intelligence and how those little numbers can determine what colleges you’re accepted to and what your future looks like. I think the biggest issue with common core is the exclusion of creativity. By creating certain rules and regiments of note taking and test taking it forces students to learn a certain way, using a certain part of the brain that they are not used to. They have a harder time processing the information and their knowledge and in-depth analysis becomes very shallow, Only remembering what will get them the highest amount of points on their overall score. I think the idea of common core is a very solid strong idea, that everyone is able to learn the same way and it would become more organized, but the fact that the restrictions are detrimental to the learning process and creativity diminishes it’s relevance in society. If we changed the parameters and found a more practical way to use common core, the United States would have such a better reputation for education.