Arguments Against Common Core Standards

Our nation is lagging behind in academics compared to other nations, such as South Korea and Japan. In an effort to achieve higher academic levels to compete effectively with other nations, Common Core for secondary education was developed. Common Core (2016), according to its website, is designed to prepare students for the future by providing standards in which a student should meet by the end of each school year. Some support the Common Core because it promotes a higher level of comprehension. Others oppose the Common Core because it does not sufficiently improve comprehension skills and college readiness. The Common Core should be opposed because not only it demotes appreciation for reading, but also does not sufficiently prepare a student
According to Sandra Stotsky (2010), the reading standards of the Common Core do not college-bound students any better than previous ones in Massachusetts and California (p. 24). This is alarming, because in a world where a bachelor’s degree is required for most entry level jobs, preparing high school students to become college ready is critical. How do you improve readiness? De-emphasize standardized testing. Common Core heavily accentuates testing (“Arguments against the common core”, 2014, p. 5). This means that instructional processes are largely replaced by test prep materials, which would result in the diminished role of the instructor and learning principles, such as solving puzzles and developing worldliness. In other words, instructors should encourage learning principles, not standardized tests. To truly prepare students for college, career, and life, de-emphasizing standardized testing and utilizing learning principles are the main factors to improving college
To support these claims, they state that Common Core place more emphasis on critically reading non-fiction texts and learning explicit guidelines (Calkins, 2012, p. 5). While these claims are valid, it is important to note that Common Core did little to improve college readiness. In Massachusetts and California, the Common Core standards weaken the literary basis and cultural understanding to prepare students for college (Stotsky, 2010, p. 25). The emphasis on close reading contribute to the poor literary basis and cultural understanding, since it de-emphasized the background of the text. A very notable example is Common Core chief author David Coleman’s video about close reading. He mentioned that to understand Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, we need to understand “what lies within the four corners of the text” (“Arguments against the common core”, 2014, p. 4). For a rich text like Letter from Birmingham Jail, it is particularly nonsensical to read for what’s required for a standardized test and ignore the history behind the text. In order to fully develop comprehension, close reading is not the answer. The answer is understanding the background of the text and developing a cultural understanding that truly develops comprehension skills and improves college