Major
History
Second Major
Education (Elementary and Secondary)
Advisor
de Groot, Cornelis
Advisor Department
Education
Date
12-2017
Keywords
Common Core; No Child Left Behind; Education; Mathematics Education; ELA Education
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Abstract
In recent years, the United States has gone through some major reconstructions in education that will affect many generations to come. As of 2010, the country created an entirely new way to focus how schools teach Mathematics and English Language Arts. This set of standards and guidelines is known as the Common Core State Standards. They were meant to create a new set of standards that came from decades of different opportunities and ideas in order to create increasingly advanced ways to make education in the United States better. The history behind the Common Core showcases where the United States began, along with how it would continuously try to streamline and better education as a whole. In the years before the Common Core, the United States used a different strategy to advance education. That was known as No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind and the Common Core were based on similar principles, streamline education while increasing the abilities of students and United States education as a whole. The methods used were the biggest differences between each. Common Core was a complete change from all that had been done before, and within the last few years there have been mixed results and responses. Some responses were considered on track towards making a new and improved education system, while others disrupt that idea, leading to an end of the Common Core in some states. The Common Core State Standards have become one of the most polarizing ideas in the United States today, with all different people supporting or aborting it for various reasons. It has even lead to the creation of specific state standards, allowing for state controlled ideals rather than a federal government controlled one. The future of the Common Core, though unseen, may be predicted from where the United States has been before.