Common Core And Secondary Education

INTRODUCTION Our nation is LAGGING in academics compared to other nations, such as South Korea, Finland, and Japan. According to Emmeline Zhao (2012), the students of the United States scored lower on academic tests compared to other countries. However, the United States is not the worst performing nation. Its academic growth is lacking (Zhao, 2012).One way to compete effectively with other nations is Common Core for secondary education. Common Core (2016), per its website, is designed to prepare students for the future by providing standards in which a student should meet by the end of each school year. The main goals of the Common Core are to build upon state standards and to draw from elements of top performing educational systems to prepare students for the globalized society.Some support the Common Core because it promotes a higher level of comprehension skills and independent learning. Lucy Calkins (2012) mentioned that the Common Core should help students read beyond the surface level, and placed the emphasis on a student’s ability to master the academic standards (p. 1). It helps prepare students for the real-world by understanding the nuances of the text and emphasizing on the students’ task on learning the standards and applying them in the real world.Others oppose the Common Core because it does not sufficiently improve comprehension skills and college readiness. Sandra Strotsky (2010) emphasized that the Common Core standards did not prepare students