Common Core: Should the Government Participate in Education Standards?

The Common Core Initiative is something that is very important to the growth of youth in the world of education. It provides a standardized education outline in hopes of making the United States a more intellectually competitive nation. Yet, while nearly all states have adopted this Initiative, there is little faith in its influence on the intelligence of the average student. There are many attributes and subtle nuances in the whole of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. This makes it difficult to say whether or not the education system is benefiting from this initiative. While Common Core set out to define when and what children should learn, was the change necessary and/or successful? Ever since people have been attempting to standardize education the question of “What is important?” has been asked. State education standards have been around since the early 1990s. By the early 2000s, every state had developed and adopted its own learning standards that specify what students in grades 3-8 and high school should be able to do. Every state also had its own definition of proficiency, which is the level at which a student is determined to be sufficiently educated at each grade level and upon graduation. This lack of standardization was one reason why states decided to develop the Common Core State Standards in 2009. America’s decreasing intelligence average became a public matter. Many people knew something had to be done about the nation’s subpar performance on an international scale. This is when the Common Core State Standards Initiative was proposed. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a set of standards for English and Math that dictate what students should know before proceeding to the next grade. While the Federal Government had no direct input on the standards