SPED 3100

Common Core Website

Ashley Kania

Common Core
The main goal of the Common Core is to prepare students to become college- and careerready. In order for the goals of the Common Core to be met, there are high standards and
expectations that are laid out for students, teachers and even parents. This is to ensure the student
will have the necessary knowledge and skills to succeed in their chosen path after high school.
The expectation for students to succeed after high school on the individuals chosen pathway
applies to all students, regardless of where they live, whether they have a disability or not, or
how well the student can speak English. The Common Core starts in kindergarten and goes all
the way through twelfth grade where each grade has certain grade level expectations for students
to meet. However the Common Core can be compared to a stair case because it works off a
students progress; the idea is that the teacher will not move on to the next subject until the
student has fully grasped the current subject. With this concept in mind is the ideal that students
will be able to understand and be able to work hard to be able to do and understand the college
level work they will face.
One of the main emphasis in preparing students throughout the Common Core is English
language arts. In the English language arts category, there are skills that the Common Core has a
focus on for students to obtain and then work to master through the course of their schooling.
The skills include reading, writing, listening, and speaking which students can use to further their
knowledge in literature, their understandings of critical readings, and ability to use critical
thinking. As the Common Core continues to build off students progress starting in sixth grade
and from then on; science, social studies, and technical subjects start to become incorporated into
the literacy standards. If these subjects cannot be incorporated into the current literacy standard
the state can adopt them as additional content area literacy standards. In English language arts

SPED 3100
Common Core Website

Ashley Kania

Shakespeare; foundational American literature; classic myths and stories from around the world;
and American founding documents are all a part of the required content contained in the
Common Core for all students to cover that incorporates both content and skill.
The other subject that has a major emphasis on it within the Common Core is
mathematics. In mathematics there is a foundation of basic skills that students are expected to
acquire in the Common Core which include multiplication; decimals; subtraction; whole
numbers; fractions; addition; and division. As students build upon their knowledge in math and
continue to climb up the metaphorical staircase to being closer to being college- and careerready in mathematics it is important to note that unlike English language arts which is more
sequential, mathematics has the ability to be more flexible in the order that the higher order
mathematics can be taught to students. Different states teach different grade topics at different
times which leads the Common Cores college and career readiness to be competitive between
states in the mathematic department.
A major muddy point that seems to revolve around the misconception that the Common
Core is a federally mandated standard and will be implemented through No Child Left Behind
(NCLB) Act. This is a muddy point for the Common Core because first off, the federal
government had no part in the creation or implementation of the Common Core, which is all
done at the state and local levels. The NCLB Act is governed by the federal government so there
is no connection between the Common Core and the NCLB Act. Plus the NCLB Act has a
greater ability to affect the curriculum in the classroom than the Common Core does, giving
another reason to disprove this muddy point.

SPED 3100
Common Core Website

Ashley Kania

Work Cited
Department of Public Instruction. (n.d.). COMMON CORE STATE AND NC ESSENTIAL
STANDARDS. Retrieved from http://www.ncpublicschools.org/acre/standards/