The Common Core does more harm than good
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As the Common Core is being rolled out into public schools this year, increasingly more parents across multiple states — Ohio, New Mexico and New Jersey — are opting their children out of Common Core exams. Why? Because the Common Core is just another standardised test among a slew of others that detracts from learning in the classroom and ultimately facilitates teaching to the test.
Since the No Child Left Behind Legislation was passed by the Bush administration in 2001, the federal government has attempted to make schools more accountable for their students’ performance through standardized testing. The government’s intent was to ensure that all students would receive a quality education, regardless of income, district, or race. But despite evidence that standardised testing does not make education better, largely from the failure of No Child Left Behind, the Common Core is still being promoted by the government as a better alternative.
The main goal of the Common Core exams is to provide the government with statistical information on the standards of the nation’s education. Thus, students, such as Marina Ford, a sophomore interviewed by the Washington Post, are forced to spend “valuable weeks” studying for exams that “didn’t remotely have purpose.” She was forced to prioritize the Common Core exam over her AP exams, which have more purpose to students, namely to facilitate admission to college. Like online tests, Common Core exams are also vulnerable to glitches, such as unreliable Internet connection and log-on issues. Students have complained that the questions are often ambiguous or have errors, directing students to analyse paragraphs that don’t exist. Indeed, the Common Core has proven so unpopular that some schools are giving out incentives to students just to encourage participation in the exams.
Parents have a right to be concerned about the standards of their child’s education and opting out of the Common Core is their last ditch attempt to express their disapproval to a government which does not listen.
I disagree with you Sam. The Common Core standards and the tests are a package deal, so I’m fine with the author lumping them together.
Bill Gates himself lumped them together when he said: “When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better.”
Okay, so aligning tests to standards is normal and Bill Gates thinks raising the standards will lead to mass commodification of K-12 education or something. I disagree but that’s not important. You and the author are blasting tests based on common core as if there wasn’t already an equivalent test. California used STAR, other states used similar tests under different names. All of them were pointless to the students and used to give the schools and state performance data. But they were designed to identify the worst of problem schools, so most teachers didn’t feel the need to teach the test.
For some reason, states decided to make these tests far more difficult when realigning to common core standards. No one made them do this (except the anti-public education lobby). Yes, the new standards are higher than the outdated state standards (which I hope everyone wants) but in theory nothing was stopping states from doing away with the tests entirely. The new tests are a product of the crusade for “greater accountability” and the wider efforts to discredit and destroy public education. Common core is just the boogeyman to distract everyone from what’s really happening.
Lots of misinformation here. First off, Common Core is a set of standards for English and mathematics teaching. It’s not a test, though many states have chosen to develop tests based on the standards. Then there’s the fact that common core wasn’t developed by the federal government. It was developed on behalf of a coalition of state governors and later endorsed by Arne Duncan.
Since the entire basis of this post was blatant misinformation, the rest falls apart. “The main goal of the Common Core exams is to provide the government with
statistical information on the standards of the nation’s education”? How does that work, when distinct tests are created and administered by groups of states? And when every state uses tests to measure how schools are doing, the problem of pointless testing has nothing to do with what standards are in place.
So I’d encourage people to check the facts on this matter, as well as the sensationalism of the final sentence.