Common Core’s goal not in best interest for Kansans

By Kara Gale

Over the past several years, schools across the nation have been encouraged to adopt Common Core standards for their students.

These standards make the requirements for what students need to know by each grade the same in every school in the U.S.

The No Child Left Behind Act made schools accountable for students who weren’t doing well academically, but the states still made their own standards for what they needed to know.

Common Core takes away the state’s individual rights to decide what its students should be learning.

However, Kansas wants to fight back. There is a bill in Kansas legislature that, if put into effect, will outlaw Common Core in Kansas schools.

Lisa Huesers, a spokesperson for Kansans Against Common Core, said, “Nationwide standards put our country at risk. Because the strength of our country is our individuality between states.”

Common Core doesn’t allow for creativity in the classroom.

There are standardized tests that go along with Common Core to find out what students know.

Often, these types of tests stress students and don’t give an accurate representation of students knowledge.

Schools should be focusing on cultivating a love of learning, not forcing them to memorize information.

The government didn’t create the curriculum, rather, it was an outside group. The government also hasn’t required states to adopt these standards.

Instead, there are incentives to states that move to Common Core. States that applied for the changes by a certain time were given more money.

Even though the government isn’t directly mandating these changes, they are still using their own means to get schools to do what it wants.

Common Core is just another way of controlling schools by defining what information people need to know.

The goal of Common Core is to better prepare students for college and life beyond it.

However, knowing information doesn’t help students in college. Love of learning is what helps them.

If people are controlling what the up and coming generations know, the country is going to go even more downhill than it already is.

Kansas is doing a good thing in trying to fight against this.

Individuality in life and learning needs to be preserved because as humans, we are nothing without it.

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