Students are the real casualties of Common Core

The recent moratorium on tying student test scores to teacher evaluations is surely a step in the right direction. If, indeed, test scores are low due to a poor rollout of the Common Core program, teachers should not be held accountable for students’ inability to perform on state tests. If we wait four years as recommended in the moratorium, then the students who were unfairly thrown into the Common Core curriculum in the middle of their academic careers will have graduated, and the students who began their education with a Common Core philosophy will be testing more successfully.

While this is a well-deserved win for teachers, what about the students who are left floundering? What about the students who were successful in school prior to the introduction of Common Core to the fifth through eighth grades, when neither their teachers nor the districts were trained in the teaching of this curriculum? What happens to the students who have become academically “at risk” but who, prior to the Common Core implementation, were successful students? Who is looking out for the students who fall into these four years of waiting for their test scores to match up to their abilities?

We have failed these students. By insisting that they take courses that they are unprepared to take and tests that are unfair and misguided, we have put our children at risk. We have damaged their self-esteem by making them habitual failures when they were unable to complete academic work successfully. We have made failure a part of their everyday life, with little regard for how it affects their world.

When a child fails every math test he or she takes, and sees many of his or her classmates doing the same, failure becomes acceptable, and students feel defeated. The feeling that there is “no way out” becomes prevalent, and the desire to persevere is stifled. After all, no matter how hard they try, they still fail — and clearly through no fault of their own, as the state has finally recognized that these students were not prepared for these courses. This is made clear by the decision that their scores will no longer be tied to teacher evaluations.