By TIANA GOEGEBUER

Here are two simple words that nearly everyone in the United States has become increasingly familiar with: Common Core. Whatever your view is on the Common Core Standards, I ask you to be understanding of my opinion. The goal of this article is not to offend you or change your views, but to give you a different perspective.

Let me start out by providing a little bit of background information about the current status of the Common Core Initiative across our nation. According to Wikipedia.com, “The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an education initiative in the United States that details what K-12 students should know in English Language Arts and Mathematics at the end of each grade… and seeks to establish consistent education standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from High School are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs, or enter the workforce.” As of right now, 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia are members of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, with Texas, Virginia, Alaska, Nebraska, and Indiana opting not to adopt the initiative at a state level. Minnesota has adopted the English Language Arts standards, but not the Mathematics standards.

As I’m sure you’re aware, Common Core has been implemented in various stages in our local schools, mostly in the form of worksheets and new methods of testing that are meant to challenge the student’s critical thinking skills. For a bit of information concerning my own academic experiences, I am a straight-A student, and have been for most of my High School career. Most of the Common Core worksheets I have personally received have been in my current History class, and are not that difficult to complete. However, I have also come face-to-face with the dreaded mathematics portion of Common Core.

For my first semester math final, the test was composed of two parts: a multiple choice portion, and an open-ended worksheet. In that semester we had been learning about various forms of graphing and the quadratic formula, but on this worksheet I was asked to calculate trajectory and probability. I was absolutely not prepared for those questions, and neither were the rest of my classmates. I found out later that everyone in my math class had failed the worksheet, so much so that my teacher had to make the worksheet count for extra credit instead of something that was a big part of our grade. If she hadn’t, every single student would have failed the final exam. And this didn’t just take place at my school. I know many students from other schools in the district that were given the same worksheet as I was, and guess what? They failed, too. So how was it rational for the students to be expected to suddenly know things that had not yet been taught? And was it reasonable for our terrible scores on these unknown concepts to be a part of our grade?

Months after that, it was announced that all of the juniors at my school would be taking the Smarter Balanced Pilot Test. The SBPT was meant to be a trial run for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, and give the schools an idea of how their students will perform on the test in the future. So, in the middle of April, all of the juniors were directed to the computer labs and told the basics of how to operate the online testing program. And when I say basics, I mean that we were told how to open the program, and that we would not be able to adjust the audio volume or close the testing program once we had begun answering questions. If we needed to adjust the volume or take a break, all of our current progress on the test would be lost. Oh, and the test proctors were not allowed to assist the students with the program in any way, even if it was a technical glitch. Basically, the students were forced to do nothing but stare at a computer screen for nearly five hours.

I plugged in my headphones and adjusted the computer’s volume before opening the program. In the English portion of the test, I was asked to do everything from annotating different texts, writing an ending of a story, and answering multiple choice questions that were based on some audio that I was supposed to listen to. However, the audio was not adjusted correctly, and the second I hit the ‘play’ button, everyone in the room turned to look at me because the volume was up way too loud. I quickly paused the audio, and tried to figure out what to do. I ended up having to guess on all of the audio-related questions, because there was no way I was going to disrupt the whole class, and there was no way for me to fix the volume without losing all of my progress. Not only was it extremely embarrassing, but also disappointing and frustrating because I knew that I couldn’t perform as well as I normally do.

After my horrifying experience with the English portion, I seriously hoped that the Mathematics portion would be closer to the testing I was already familiar with. However, those hopes were quickly dashed. The students in my classroom were asked to do everything from solving complex equations to making a graph on the computer, and only about three of the 23 questions were multiple choice; the rest were free response. Even though the kids in my classroom were at different math levels (i.e. Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calculus, Calculus, etc.), we each took a test that was almost identical to one another. We were not allowed to use any scratch paper, and were expected to solve the equations in our heads. I am able to hold my own in math class, but the questions I was asked to solve completely confused me. At the beginning of the test, I did my best to answer the questions as accurately as I could, but as time went by and the questions continued to become more and more confusing, I almost quit trying entirely.

Both tests were mentally, emotionally, and even physically draining on all of the students who took it. I was not the only student who was frustrated with the English portion, and the math portion stumped kids who are much, much better at math than I am. In all honestly, I think I failed both portions of the test. And for someone who has always pushed herself to do the best that she can and excel academically, saying those words feels like admitting defeat in the worst possible way. The test I took was like a method of torture, and it was only the “practice” version. It didn’t affect my grade at all, thank goodness. However, students in my school and beyond will be expected to take the test again next year. And at that time, it will directly affect their grades. I feel a deep sense of sympathy for those students, and hope that something – anything – will be changed to make the process easier to bear.

I hope that this has given you a glimpse of what is in store for American children who will be experiencing Common Core testing at its prime in the next few years. In the future, when your kids come home from school complaining about how draining and frustrating their day in class has been, please try to be understanding and offer whatever support you can. Because believe me, when I say that they are going to need every bit of support they can get, I really mean it.