How Common Core Broke U.S. Schools

First implemented in 2009, Common Core was an ambitious initiative to revolutionize the American education system. National leaders from Bill Gates to President Obama supported the idea and it cost an estimated $15.8 billion to implement. Years later, research showed the new curriculum had minimal impact on student performance. So why did Common Core fail? Can a common curriculum be successful for all students? Watch the video to find out.

America is preparing for a return to school this fall semester, but curriculums might seem a bit different than they used to. Many states have implemented or are currently in the process of developing new educational standards to replace the Common Core.

“I think you are seeing today what kids experience and their curriculum kind of is a little bit more blended,” Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias said.

On Feb. 12, 2020, Florida adopted the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. New York is also developing its own curriculum. The Next Generation Learning Standards are expected to be implemented throughout New York by September 2022.

However, experts remain doubtful on whether the new standards truly stand by themselves.

“The standards that the states have come up with, where they claimed they were different from Common Core, they’re really not that much different,” said Tom Loveless, an educational researcher and former senior fellow at Brookings. “Some states just basically took the Common Core label off and then slapped the new label on the package.”

The end of Common Core might be arriving, but its impacts are here to stay. Watch the video above to learn more about why states are moving away from Common Core.

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Why U.S. Schools Are Failing Our Kids

[turle]

“You did it this way and got the correct answer. However you were SUPPOSED to do it this way. Therefore you have failed the assignment.”

[cinderblockstudios]

As long as we keep treating education like a series of hurdles to jump over rather than a way to foster curiosity and intelligence then we'll keep failing.

[Aging_Casually_Late_Gamer]

When kids still get punished for getting the right answer because they didnt do it, "the right way", all you're going to get is angry and confused kids and parents.

[abramwalker]

My mom taught for 13 years before she quit because she was disciplined for refusing to follow the common core curriculum back in 2013. She called it back then. I am so glad I graduated before it fully took effect.

[Biscuit]

"The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple” – Stan Gudder

[perforongo]

The most useful course I ever took in High School was a financial literacy course taught as an elective by a teacher who used to work as an accountant.

[holytankadinSabelane]

I grew up under 'no child left behind, ' which just meant every child left behind. They cut out advanced and slow classes to make everyone learn together, but that meant we could only go as fast as the slowest child.

[jamesbell]

All this and NO ONE Thought that paying teachers better and making sure the best and brightest stay on the job, was important.

[Lol-dnvf]

I had a classmate who could do math in his head and get the right answer, but always got docked for not explaining how he did it. I was always terrible with math but great at writing, so he would solve and I would make up an explanation on how he got it.
It was a beautiful partnership lol

[KS-unpi]

It is frustrating that people make rules when they aren't in the classroom or have been far removed from it.

[mr.applejuice]

Ya know the thing I never got about this common core implementation is the reasoning that "America is lagging behind other countries in education and we need to catch up to these other nations" which is very true but then they go ahead and ignore the proven better education systems (that they themselves admitted) adopted by said countries and decided to create their own very unproven method.

[MMMgrizzly]

I saw my little brother solving a 2 digit multiplication problem, he was drawing boxes and shi and taking 10 minutes on each problem. The school system keeps ruining kids🤦‍♂️

[Ant]

My history teacher went out of his way to teach us about investing and managing our money more than he taught history, because no one else was going to do it. I'll forever have respect for that man for that.

[mattross]

Raising standards on already unmotivated students is a recipe for disaster. And while were on the subject, dangling a students future in front of them like a carrot on a stick does not motivate them to do better in school, it makes them feel defeated and more likely to give up

[kylorenkardashian]

Asking your parents to help you with common core math homework is like asking your German speaking uncle to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics

[ovrezy]

Us schools started to break in the 1980s, and continued to decline so much that after forty years they thought something as ridiculously inane as common core seemed reasonable to them.

[gigispence]

I am a pure mathematics student with aspirations in academia. Where common core fails is that it effectively says “you got the right answer but you thought about it differently so it’s wrong” which (at least from the perspective of mathematics) is so so so backwards. One of my proudest moments in college was when my low dimensional topology professor said to me “that’s not the way I would approach the proof or even think about it but your way is incredibly cool and elegant.”

Common core especially fails students who have a natural talent for math because math is inherently malleable.

[abdsha]

Instead of increasing the difficulty of the problems they should have made a system which makes even difficult problems easier to understand.

[emilyb]

Right now the school system is more focused on "prepare kids to score high on tests so they can improve our statistics" and not on "make sure this knowledge actually sticks so that our kids think critically and can grow and learn..."

[HeatherSummerRaine]

I pulled my child out of High School because she was no where near close to passing the Math EOC. She started common core in kindergarten, and was beyond lost. We had to go back to basics, and not breakdown the problems. She doesn’t learn like that. Once she grasped basic concepts we moved on from there, and incorporated harder math. She just graduated homeschool, and made it into the college of her choice all without the EOC, and common core. She went from feeling like a math failure to understanding it. The public school system is great if you fit in that mold of their learning, but if you don’t it can be really difficult! I will never regret pulling her out of public school!