Examples Of School Placement Context

The word curriculum can mean something different to different people, even to different teachers who use the term almost daily (Manning & Butcher, 2012). However, it boils down to curriculum being what a student learns, both in terms of core subject content, as well as though social activity and elective/activity courses. However, there has often been a disconnect between different states and districts over what exactly should be in the curriculum for various grades and what is needed to prepare students for life beyond school, as well as providing little basis for comparing the US to other countries. That’s where Common Core State Standards (CCSS) come in. According to Teaching in the Middle School (2012), the Common Core standards were created in an attempt to provide curriculum standards that are “rigorous, internationally benchmarked, and aligned with college and work expectations”. Since its implementation in 2009, 42 US states and the District of Columbia have integrated the standards into their curriculums. (Core Standards, 2015)

104-110). With these three features these will make a successful student not only in their K-12 years, but this will also be beneficial to the students in college and as they begin their careers in the work force. As teachers begin to change their ways of teaching to adjust to the common core standards it will create something fundamentally important in the schools system to create successful students. Not only does this take out the state creating state standardized assessments, but now the teachers are liable for that.

There are many approaches that can be taken in order to develop a school’s curriculum, or the material that the students will learn. If there were no federal regulation of curriculum, then it would not be possible to compare student achievement across districts or even states. The federal program, Common Core State Standards, assists in equaling education across the nation. The Common Core has reinvented the perception of student learning which, in turn, has caused American education to become a corporate institution. As a result, there has been a threat to states’ rights for education as more rigorous content has been implemented into classrooms by the government, which ultimately changes the role of the teacher.

Long Branch Middle School is a very urban school where diversity is predominant in all the departments and classrooms. In my observation, 75% of the students are Latinos or with Latino descent (first generation), 20% of students are black and the 5% remaining are white. This is because the vast majority of people living in Long Branch are Brazilian, Mexican or somewhere where Spanish is the main language spoken at home.

Park Middle is located in Scotch Plains, New Jersey and is one of two middle schools within the town. On average there are 930 students enrolled at Park over the past three years (See Appendix A, Table A1). Additionally, Scotch Plains’ population consists of 77.4% White citizens, but is also composed of 11.1% of African Americans, 7.7% Asian, and 6.7% Hispanic citizens (see Appendix B, Table B1). The town’s population is largely representative of the school’s demographics (see Appendix C, Graph C1). When referencing the school’s performance on district benchmarks and state testing, Park Middle School has met most of their established targets. However, even with most established targets met, certain subgroups are in need of further attention

The lack of educational benchmarks and standardization in the United States of America, USA is disjointed and subpar leaving students ill prepared to enter the workforce and college. As evidenced by the persistent problem of students graduating and passing required exit exams in high school; yet, they still needed remediation upon entry to college. The Common Core is good because it provides a set of age appropriate learning goals and sets a national high-quality academic standard for Math and English to prepare students for college and career readiness. In essence, the Common Core defines what a student should know and be able to do at different grade levels.

“Nineteen countries and education systems scored higher than the United States in reading on the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, up from nine systems when the test was last administered in 2009. “While we’re standing still, other countries are making progress,” said Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which issued the U.S. report on PISA.” (Heitin). From the outside the initiative, “Common Core” that President Obama and the government have been pushing since 2009 seems like it would be a great thing for education ,our children, and the future of our society, but once you look closer it is not. I believe that we definitely need serious improvement in the US

The Common Core State Standards are considered to be a high-quality group of academic standards. Before the standards were developed, it seemed as if the progress of the students in the United States was remaining stagnant and that America students were falling behind their international peers. The blame for this setback has fallen on the fact that standards are not consistent and from state-to-state students are required to know different things at different grade levels. As a result students are not graduating with the same set of skills (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014).

From the word ‘core’ reveals that the Common Core State Standards has higher chances of success than other educational initiative where other improvement determinations have failed. The standards characterise one of the most promising developments in the struggles made to improve a nation’s transformation. The Common Core State Standards are not intended to replace any other standards that might be considered as weak or strong. Rather, they seek to reinforce all other standards in use by enhancing an integrated model of literacy in stating the details of content required for students in terms of grade (Drake, 2012).

“Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a result of the “Standards and Accountability Movement” which began in the 1990s in the United States. This particular branch of education reforms was geared towards expectations of learning at each grade level. The Standards and Accountability Movement not only brought attention on what students were expected to learn, but on teachers as well – focusing on how teachers were to implement lessons and able to teach for student achievement which would be measured in

The Common Core is a set of academic standards in both mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These standards were created to insure that all students, no matter where in the United States and regardless of social economic standing all will acquire the necessary skills to graduate and allow for success in college and or a career. With these learning goals students progressively gain the tools for each grade. The standards define the knowledge and skills students should gain throughout their K-12 education. The standards are research and evidence based goals that include clear, understandable, and consistent lessons that are aligned with college and career expectations with higher order thinking skills. In North Carolina,

The “Common Core” is a proposed set of newly design methods in academic standards in today’s subjects like Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and English / Language Arts courses. In about forty-eight states, this new academic implementation has replaced the old teaching methods to show a gain in the ability for students to be on the same path in every state. The primary focus for Common Core is to measure a fair and accurate way for student achievement for graduation regardless of the child’s state they live in. Well, at first the adopted Common Core standards demonstrated little to no problems once established however, today it has become widely controversial. This research paper will demonstrate this issue

The Common Core curriculum is intended to educate pupils for the increasingly demanding world that we exist in today. Common Core State Standards establish precise, uniform guidelines for what every school child should know and be able to do from kindergarten through 12th grade creating benchmarks for reading and math, replacing education goals that varied drastically from state to state. These new standards focus on preparing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills that are essential to be successful after high school, and gives teachers a means to evaluate a student’s development throughout the academic

The Common Core Standards were created in 2010 as an ideal system to help the students of the United States compete with top competitors worldwide. Teachers, standard experts, and other countries studied learning styles internationally to create a system that is supposed to fill the gap in curriculum and the “hole that is a mile wide and only an inch deep” the old system has created (“Myths”). On this new system, state standards will be raised to the highest in 20 years; therefore, no state will have a mediocre curriculum. This means all states will be synchronized to one another, and as Dwyer says, “Parents should know where their child will be from womb to tomb (Nelson).”

Current nationwide examination outcomes offer continuing paperwork of the should enhance the concentrate on enhancing student accomplishment in mathematics. The National Evaluation of Educational Development (NAEP) just recently launched the 2005 mathematics ratings which mirrored student accomplishment in the locations of dimension, geometry, information analysis, likelihood and algebra. Country wide, just 30 % of 8th graders were considered competent. Although mirroring a boost from previous evaluations, just 69 % of the 8th graders country wide showed a standard abilities level on the NAEP evaluation (Olson, 2005).