Common Core State Standards

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-initiated effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. While these new standards are being implemented by most states, there is much vocal opposition.

Doing a web search can bring up more opinion than facts. Here are some resources that may help.

Conservatives hate Common Core. The rest of America? Who knows.

Scott Clement at the Washington Post has a good post on the status of Common Core and the challenges ahead. Some highlights...

Support for Common Core in polls ranged from 33 percent to 59 percent in a single month in 2014.

Americans support the broad goals of Common Core ... [but] The more people say they have heard about the program, the more they oppose it.

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Common Core State Standards

The anchor standards define college and career readiness, in part, as the ability to integrate and evaluate content present in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Who Is Fighting Against Common Core?

U.S. News has a great article outlining why groups on all ends of the political spectrum are opposing Common Core Standards. The reasons range from states rights & local control to a recruiting tool for home schooling to a dislike of standardized evaluations.

The article also points out that while teachers like the standards, "they complain the curriculum, created without teacher input, is inflexible, its installation has been disorganized, and administrators and parents will blame them if student test scores implode."

Three-Minute Video Explaining the Common Core State Standards

This video, put out by the Council of the Great City Schools, explains why we need Common Core and how results are measured. But viewing the video can give you an idea of the confusion and fear that people have latched on to to oppose Common Core Standards.