Common Core Curriculum and Standards

Common Core Curriculum and Standards Name: Institution: Introduction The common core curricular and standards refer to the mathematics and language arts literacy standards that were developed in 2010 and adopted in about forty states in the United States. These educational standards outline what students are expected to understand and what they should be able to do in each subject from kindergarten through senior year of high school. The standards are aimed at preparing the students for college and careers. Most importantly, if implemented in all states, they will make the United States more competitive academically. The common core comprises of different benchmarks in every grade level, although there are a few unifying themes. For example, in language arts, the learners are required to focus on fewer personal narratives but emphasize on more opinions and non-fictional reading. In mathematics, the students are aimed at focusing no fewer concepts but in more depth. This paper will describe the common core curricular and standard, its strength and weakness. Initially, all the states in the United States used to develop their academic standards, this made them vary widely and it was because of this problem that the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers created the common core standards to ensure every student acquired the same education and skills regardless of where they live. The primary goal of the common core curriculum is to introduce a form of education which is fit for the entire country. Most importantly, the implementation of these standards will help in raising the proficiency level on tests which are used in assessing student learning. This is essential in setting states competency on par with those set internationally. The common core standards act as guidelines of the skills that the learners should acquire throughout every grade level before the complete high school. They may be considered as a broad outline of learning expectations that guide the teachers as well as district leaders when crafting a curriculum. Regarding English and language arts, standards emphasize that the leaners should have the ability to read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts (Gewertz, 2015). Importantly, the students should also know how to construct arguments and citing information from their readings. The teachers are also required to teach literacy skills which match their disciplines. An example of a literacy expectation is that by the end of the second grade, learners have the ability to explain how images in texts enhance and facilitate their meaning. Moreover, according to research carried out about the United States mathematics curricular, it was found that it is significantly wide but very shallow. To overcome this problem, the mathematics standards were implemented to stress the need for focusing on a few selected topics but going deeper so as to understand the solutions to a problem (Gewertz, 2015). The common core mathematics aims at succeeding in several issues which include promoting procedural skills and fluency and also helping the students to comprehend mathematical concepts and applying mathematics skills. For example, by fifth grade, a student should be able to apply the...