The Common Core State Standards - Blog Post #2

For years there have been numerous approaches to creating curriculum at all levels of education. The common core state standards is a sort of evolution to these approaches. The state standards “set general goals for student learning but they do not specify what or how to teach.”  The standards say what is possible but they do not lay out specifically how to achieve these goals. It is up to the instructors, colleagues, and the district to come up with a curriculum that revolves around the standards. Schools in different demographics will adjust their curriculum to fit the student’s needs. What I mean is, different students need to be tended to differently, one group of students learn differently than another group and as instructors we need to see that.
It’s obvious that the state standards have their flaws. One example is how the Obama and Bush administrations give out federal grants to those who decide to adopt the standards. Another would be that the standards are not only being used as a goal system but also as a scale. There are schools who use the standards against instructors who do not match the results of other instructors. This is not fair. How are you going to judge one teacher, based on the results of children in which we know nothing about? We don’t know if these kids are struggling and placed in a lower level class. We need to be able to adapt our curriculum to fit each student. One way we can do this is by looking at the economy and adapting our curriculum in a way that suites these students who live there.
The standards have their limitations in how far they can go. Many instructors are going to base their teachings on the standards and only teach their students to pass certain exams. This is not effective, in my opinion, this only limits what we are teaching the children. Curriculum needs to be unique for each district to fit the needs of their students.