Biggest Common Core Pros and Cons

Pros

• Discourages self-centered, weak writing; encourages grounding arguments in evidence.
• Encourages classic works over young adult popular fiction.
• Reading research shows children need broad background information; Core emphasizes “informational text.”
• Significant emphasis on source documents.
• Requires more than previous state standards except in California, Indiana, and Massachusetts.
• Provides course alignment across teachers, grades, and nearly all states.

Cons

• States can only add to the standards, not alter them.
• Eliminates algebra before 9th grade. Provides students no accelerated path.
• Requires English teachers to explain “informational text” and historical documents they are not trained to teach.
• Already being used to promote “fuzzy math” in some areas.
• The draft science standards endorse Darwinian evolution and manmade catastrophic climate change as fact.
• Requires specific percentages of fiction and nonfiction, starting more even and ending with a ratio of 30 percent fiction to 70 percent nonfiction in 12th grade.
• Implements an experimental form of geometry that failed with gifted Russian students.
• Creators admit it prepares graduates for a two-year college, not four-year college or university.

Sources: Bill Evers, Pioneer Institute, Common Core State Standards, David Coleman.

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