To become competitive in the international job market, Arkansas’ youngest students will begin studying for and shaping their school year around a national standardized test this year — ahead of the 2014 start date.
The Common Core Curriculum will be utilized by 48 states and touts itself as having higher standards than those previously implemented by the states individually.
The Arkansas Senate writes that the standards are much more rigorous than those currently in place in the state and predicts complaints from parents and students until they’re used to the new requirements.
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Shaping a curriculum around a test simply means that the teachers are going to teach in a way that the kids do well on the test. This is almost always mutually exclusive from actually learning anything.
I agree and I think many educators probably do as well. There’s a certain benefit in benchmarks to ensure the students are progressing as they should but that idea has been taken too far in our society.