3 Reasons Students Criticize Common Core

The Common Core State Standards were created to better prepare students for careers and college. Now that students have had some exposure to these standards and the assessments that go along with them, some students aren't thrilled.

Here are three reasons students are criticizing common core:

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1. The standard for "smart" has changed: Common Core standards focus more on thinking skills rather than what neurologist and teacher Dr. Judy Willis calls "binary skills" related to memorization.

According to Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, Dr. Willis writes, "With the shift toward interpretation, communication, reasoning, and transfer of learning to novel applications, the repetition of facts is no longer the criteria for being 'smart.' Previous high achievers may now find themselves at the bottom of the testing pool when simple ability to memorize facts is no longer sufficient to do well on tests."

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2. Change is stressful: While students have been used to one set of testing standards, new Common Core assessments may cause stress for kids hoping to do well. Dr. Willis points out that it will actually be harder to do well on tests that require analytical thinking when kids are under stress because, "Stress cuts off students' access to these networks of higher-order thinking, logic, creative problem solving and analytical judgment."

3. The tougher tests make them sick: According to The New York Times, students at an academy in the Bronx "blamed their English tests on making them anxious and sick." Some of the students said the tests were too long and demoralizing. Some teachers weren't even prepared.

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