On Feb. 27, 2014,The Washington Times published an online article from the Associated Press (AP), titled Wisconsin Democrat Burke opposes Common Core Bill. It delves into 2016 Democratic governor candidate Mary Burke’s opposing views on current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s intentions to change Common Core Standards (CCSS).
What exactly are Common Core Standards?
The article, “The Pros & Cons of Common Core State Standards” on TeachHub.com, explains, “The CCSS are designed to provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn and sets academic benchmarks for all students, regardless of where in the country they live. Common Core defines just what students at each grade level need to learn in reading, writing and math so that they stay on track for college and careers.”
Will Change Bring Benefits?
My opinion, as a Wisconsin resident, mother and tax-payer, is that changing Wisconsin’s core standards would be a colossal waste of time and money. If Wisconsin’s educators begin the monstrosity of reassembling cores — and practically throwing away all the standards the entire nation adopted a few years ago in 2010 — students and teachers would be losing out on precious learning time.
Instead of concentrating on new lessons, teachers would spend ample time pre-testing and testing to, no pun intended, test these new, specific Wisconsin standards. The aforementioned AP article quoted Burke as saying, “We need these (standards) in Wisconsin and to think three years of work and resources are down the drain because of political pressure from, frankly, what looks like tea party groups, is ridiculous.”
It likely means more meetings for teachers before and after school to talk about how they will teach. They’ll be unavailable at times when our children could stop in the classroom for extra lesson help or questions. Students, teachers and parents will no doubt become stressed with the weight of changes to more standardized testing.
Any parents moving into another state would have to face a nightmare as their child tries to assimilate into new standards. When Wisconsin teachers retire, quit or are fired, who will replace them? Bringing a teacher from a different state with different perspectives on the core standards would make a job transition difficult.
What our students learn in preparation for college is imperative. So, the differences in core standards from state to state would directly affect where a student would be accepted to college. How could a student keep up with which state accepts their state’s standards and which ones find them unsatisfactory? Therefore, it would effect the careers are children can choose. Other states’ colleges may possibly shut the door to students who want to eventually leave the state of Wisconsin.
While my own daughter is more than 15 years away from entering college, I can guess that she will find it near impossible to be accepted to any college outside of Wisconsin due to state-specific standards. Talk about putting a damper on the American dream for future generations…
Change can be good. Yet, change is huge! It can be costly and it can bring on a lot of stress for residents, taxpayers, parents, students and educators. If only four years ago our nation’s schools banded together to achieve standard goals, why is it that Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, is so quick to toss those to the wayside?
