"The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12: Origins, Goals, Challenges"

            The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is not something that I came into this class with unfamiliar knowledge.  I had this understanding that the CCSS was something adopted by my state which implemented tools to allow teachers to help their students succeed when President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” act brought of our state and national testing scores down.  After reading The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts Instruction in Grades 6-12, I found that there were more flaws to the traditional standards-based approach than there were in the new CCSS. 

            The CCSS allows teachers to come together and share experiences in order to build new curriculum in their class rooms that will allow their students to grow in the classroom and prepare them for future post-secondary studies.  The CCSS, according to authors Richard Beach, Amanda Thein, and Allen Webb, is a “more consistent set of goals” and “will make standards-based reform more effective.”  Despite the good this reform does to improve student learning, I saw that the clear difference between the CCSS and the previous standards-based approach lies within the flaws outlined within the chapter’s discussion on “limitations of a Standards-Based Approach” rather than the improvement of the CCSS reform.

            In the standards-based approach to education there were many rigid flaws that allowed students – both higher learners and those already struggling behind – to slip through the cracks of each school’s educational system.  As a future educator, it is frightening to imagine not seeing any one succeed in a class; I feel that it is my responsibility to help every learner achieve above and beyond set state standards.  The limitations that schools face as part of the previous standards-based approach include standardizing the curriculum for every student.  In the case of standardizing the curriculum, students would be taught the same subject using the same curriculum despite some students not being able to grasp what the curriculum holds for them.  Not every student learns the same and therefore would fall through the curriculum set by the state’s standards.

            Further gaps found in the standards-based approach included:  Homogenization of instruction, fragmented curriculum – the isolation of standards being taught as opposed to “well-balanced curriculums” intended to build sophisticated “connections and understanding” between subjects.”  Failure to acknowledge cultural diversity and economic failure within districts are also found to be problematic with the standards-based approach. 

Among the shortcomings of the standards-based approach, I find that what school districts and teachers face that is probably the hardest issue to combat is the lack of funds or economic inequities that students face.  The amount of children living in poverty – those who cannot afford food or come from poor income families – are the students who suffer the most from the economic downturn our nation has been struggling to come back from.  While teachers have the power to educate and further improve the minds of our students, the change within our nation’s economy happens at a level that is above the heads of most of our learners.  Our students cannot conceive why the economy is the way it is or how they can change it.

While the standards-based approach faced many shortcomings, the new Common Core State Standards aims to fix and improve upon how teachers help their students grow and function within the classroom.