The majority of incoming freshmen in our nation struggle with college placement tests.
Two Cabrini alumni and leaders in the education field agreed on the importance of the common core.
The common core standards are a salvation to help high school students prepare for college as well as their careers in the future.
Dane Linn, a Cabrini alumnus and the vice president of the business roundtable, spoke on Sept. 23 in Grace Hall. “If the United States is going to be a competitive nation we have to figure out ways in which our education system can raise the bar,” Linn said.
The common core standards will start in Pre-K but actual assessing will not begin until grade three. The test assessing are not only going to be for students from Pre-K to grade 12, but also for teachers commencing their studies.
The goal for the common core standards is to help students think critically. “The standards define the what. The intent was not to tell teachers how to teach them, how to teach the standards and what materials, textbooks or electronics or whatever media that they could use,” Linn said.
Instead of numbers in mathematics there will be word problems. In language arts, the goal is to focus students on reading, writing, speaking and listening. This testing will help students apply their knowledge to the real world.
“One of the things that we are hearing a lot about the common core is the level of rigor,” Bob Salladino, a Cabrini alumni and principal for the Rose Tree Media school district, said. “It has been a game-changer and I think really helping our teachers to try and figure out how to get our students from where they are right now to get them to where they need to be is the biggest challenge.”
States such as Massachusetts and Kentucky already have these standards in place and the students that come from these states have a higher success rate in college and in their careers.
There is an expectation that there will be a higher college retention rate and a more successful job placement rate out of college. The new standards establish a common language amongst all the teachers regardless of their style of teaching.
The concern is whether the students are ready for the new assessments and change of material and potentially styles of what they may be used to.
“I would say the common standard really should consider the cultures and the differentiation [of] where these students are coming from and where they’re living because there’s a vast difference between suburban and urban,” Peggy Renninger, a retired special education teacher, said.
