The Common Core standards are a set of consistent benchmarks designed to help students in the country be better prepared to succeed at school, college, and work. Officially launched in 2009, these standards offer clear and detailed descriptions of the skills students should have while in school. With the help of these benchmarks, teachers and parents get to support students in a way that helps them acquire the required skills at each grade level.
1. Reasons for setting up Common Core Standards
A report called “A Nation At Risk,” published in 1983, got the state governments concerned about the academic achievement of students and the state of the education system. Following this, the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law, requiring all schools to test their students annually and be prepared to answer for any failure to meet certain standards.
Here, it was noted that some states performed far better than others. At the same time, the high level of college remediation needed for some students further worried states, leading them to think that the K-12 system was not yielding the desired results.
In this context, the Common Core standards were drafted. The National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers led the initiative to develop these standards with the help of the “work groups” they set up. These groups consisted of professors, education advocacy leaders, and other experts.
2. Key features
The Common Core State Standards were designed based on research and evidence and drafted to be clear, understandable, and consistent. These standards focus on the content and application of knowledge along with the development of critical thinking skills. They were built on the basis of the strengths and takeaways identified through an evaluation of pre-existing norms and then tweaked to prepare students for success in an increasingly global society.
The Common Core Standards do not offer a definitive day-to-day curriculum for schools and students to follow. Rather, they are only meant to outline learning expectations, using which educators can craft their curricula. The focus here remains on achieving the desired results, with less importance given to the means. This offers teachers a fair amount of flexibility to adapt their classes to the needs of their students while still adhering to a common literary goal.
3. English Language Arts/literacy expectations
The Common Core English Language Arts/literacy expectations, expressed in a 66-page document, focus on the student’s ability to read and comprehend complicated literary texts and cite them to construct various arguments.
The expectations have also been broken down by grade level to make them easier to understand. For instance, by the end of second grade, students should be able to express how images add value and meaning to a piece of writing. By the end of sixth grade, they are expected to build a detailed and coherent analysis of shared texts. They must also be able to use this to cite evidence to substantiate their arguments. Finally, students who are college and career-ready must also meet certain expectations.
- Demonstrate independence in developing and defending their argument and way of thinking
- Establish strong content knowledge
- Respond to various demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline
- Comprehend and critique arguments
- Value the importance of evidence
- Use technology and digital media strategically
- Be able to understand and appreciate other perspectives and cultures
4. Standards for mathematical practice
The 93-page CCSS document for mathematics highlights the importance of focusing on a smaller number of topics but in greater depth. These topics have been covered over the length of one’s school life, advancing with each grade.
For instance, by the end of kindergarten, students must be able to count to 100 by ones and tens and describe shapes and space. By the end of fifth grade, they must understand the concept of volume and be able to find the volume of different figures in given scenarios using addition and multiplication. Once a student reaches high school, the focus here is on mastering concepts like algebra (expressions, equations and inequalities, and connections to functions and modeling), geometry (congruence, similarity, right triangles, trigonometry, geometric measurements and dimensions, modeling, etc.), and statistics and probability.
Additionally, the standards indicate a few things that students must be able to do over the course of their education.
- Make sense of problems and persevere when solving them
- Reason quantitatively and abstractly
- Come up with viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
- Model with math
- Use appropriate tools strategically
- Attend to precision
- Search for and make use of any pattern or structure
- Look for as well as express regularity in repeated reasoning
It is important to note that while these standards set the requirements for students to develop college and career readiness, they do not mandate the sequence of these high school courses.
5. Aftermath of CCSS introduction
While there has been a lot of debate regarding the efficacy and speed of the Common Core Standards, they were still applied nationwide. To ensure their application across states, the Department of Education also commissioned two groups to create tests based on the new standards. These projects were handed to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Today, educators can easily find Common Core-aligned resources.
That said, these tests were not entirely accepted by all states, with many continuing to design their tests or buying off-the-shelf exams. Currently, Virginia, Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, Arizona, Oklahoma, Indiana, and North Carolina do not subscribe to the Common Core Standards.
