Common Core Standards

Having already spent a good amount of time looking at and working with the Common Core Standards, I have two predominant opinions about them. First, the sequential steps of each tier would appear to be an effective means of having students progress in their knowledge from one grade level to the next without teachers having to worry about whether all students in a class acquired similar levels of instruction in previous years. In other words, the Common Core Standards seem to be a good way to track where students should be at academically without having to wonder at what students learned in previous years (or should have, anyways). 

My second major opinion about the Common Core standards is that I am not wholly sure that they will allow adequate time for teachers to rectify any gaps in student knowledge. By this, I mean that if several students were performing at a level below what they should be (say, two years younger than where they should be at), the teacher would obviously have to take time to remedy the situation, and this could detract from the amount of time that would otherwise have been spent nurturing other skills. I’m not saying this is a bad thing or anything because those gaps in knowledge should certainly be fixed, but I do feel that the first few years of having the Common Core standards implemented will be about readjusting curriculum to match the grade levels. Granted, if all teachers adhere adequately to the standards, this shouldn’t be a much of a problem in a few years, but until all teachers have ensured that their students’ performances match the standards, I feel that there will probably be a bit of adjusting to do. 

On a few occasions, I have heard the Common Core Standards being equated to building blocks. Personally, I feel that they are more like setting up a game of Jenga; if all the blocks are properly laid out each year, everything should fit together pretty well. However, if pieces are missing, then making a stable layer the next year is going to be more difficult unless time is taken to go back and fill in the spaces from previous layers.