The Common Core has been Maryland’s standard of education since 2010 when the National Governor’s Association assembled a team to write standards for English and Language Arts and later Mathematics. Since then, the Common Core has been responsible for implementing the PARCC test and setting the standards of state and county wide curriculum. However, it has received much backlash, from dissatisfied educators, students and even politicians.
According to the Common Core website, “The standards [of the Common Core] are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.” However many people disagree, including Severna Park Junior Sarah Hoch. “Common Core teaches us for the test,” she says, “It’s not teaching us how to actually utilize skills that we’re actually going to use in life.”
Hoch is not alone in thinking this. Mathematicians Edward Frenkel and Hung-Hsi Wu wrote that the mathematical standards for Common Core, “are often incomprehensible and irrelevant.”
Mathematics would not be the only area falling short, according to Hoch. “In English we learn about the weirdest things that we’ll never actually use instead of how to write an essay or how to write a cover letter of how to make ourselves sound important in an interview,” she says.
There is also a debate over whether or not the Core actually helps education in America. Based on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s 2010 assessment of the Common Core, “the Common Core standards are clearly superior to those currently in use in 39 states in math and 37 states in English. For 33 states, the Common Core is superior in both math and reading.”But as the Heritage Foundation argued in their criticisms of her Common Core, there are other problems facing the educational system, which can’t be fixed by a nation wide standard. Again authors of the article Lindsey Burke and Jennifer A. Marshall say, “Too many students leave high school without basic knowledge or skills.” And on a more personal level, students, who often don’t get a voice in the decision making process, seem unmotivated by the standards themselves.
“I don’t see myself learning anything important in school which is why a lot of people don’t really seem to care,” says Hoch, “If people saw what they were learning actually affected things they might be more apt to try harder.”
The future of Common Core is uncertain as President elect Trump has stated he plans to remove the system. In any case, contention over the educational standards remains.
