Jarett Fields ER Room:
Jarett Fields
The Common Core State Standards are academic guidelines that provide a clear understanding of what students are expected.
To date, forty-six states have all voluntarily adopted Common Core standards.
Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Evers argued that the standards are aligned with college and career expectations, will ensure academic consistency across states that adopt them, and are comparable to international standards of high performing countries around the world.
The Common Core standards have been an asset to Wisconsin since adopting them in June 2010, and school districts around the state have been working towards full implementation.
For the Milwaukee Public School district which has the highest percentage of minority students, Common Core is imperative.
Disproportionately, low-income and minority students are subject to low expectations, inadequate academic requirements, and lower levels of teacher effectiveness.
This partly explains why Wisconsin has the largest Black-White and Black- Asian achievement gap.
Fully implementing the Common Core standards means instructors can teach material that puts more low-income and minority students on track for college and career readiness.
Providing students with higher expectations and more effective instruction gets them into college, but the goal is to get them through college – with a degree in hand.
There are some opponents of Common Core who are concerned with costs and content.
Estimated costs of full implementation are between $100 and $250 million but this is in comparison to the state’s $11 billion education budget.
In other words, Common Core would make up less than three percent of the annual education budget.
Some opponents have argued that Common Core standards are too low, while others have said they are too high.
The Common Core State Standards are the work of experts around the country and the world, from teachers and administrators, to college professors and business leaders.
And, the Common Core Standards are guidelines which offer consistency grade-by-grade and state-by- state.
They provide teachers with what to teach, not how to teach.
The implementation of Common Core State Standards in Wisconsin began three years ago, but there are some who want to change that.
Common Core is good for Wisconsin, good for Milwaukee, and good for our students.
Raising our standards to world-class levels that prepare students for college or competitive work is vital to improving education for all students.