Introduced last year throughout the United States in grades K-12, the “Common Core” quickly gained a plethora of proponents as well as opponents.
As the controversy of the “Common Core” continues, the curriculum’s proponents are taking the importance of it a step further, pushing for it to be used in college admissions, according to a recent article by Andrew Desiderio.
Lindsey Tepe, an education policy program associate at the New America Foundation, told Real Clear Policy, “We don’t want this effort to stop at the college door.” Tepe added that the Common Core standards were “developed with the idea that they are college and career-readiness standards” and it would seem “very silly that they would not also then say that if you meet your state’s standard, that should then qualify as a minimum admissions standard to the lowest tier of four-year universities in that state.”
On the other hand, Joy Pullman, a researcher at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of School Reform News, said, “The central problem with using Common Core as the standard for immediate, non-remedial entrance into all colleges is that it is a low standard fit, not for all college admissions, but for two-year community colleges.”
According to Desiderio, Pullman said if colleges were to use Common Core for admissions, it would force competitive colleges and universities to “reduce their admissions standards, because Common Core standards are far below what competitive colleges have in the past required.”
So what would this mean for the ACT and SAT, the two college admissions exams that students take to qualify for college?
Tepe suggests Common Core assessments might even eliminate the need for the ACT and SAT. She suggests that if a state that has adopted the Common Core standards and a student in that state scores at the “college ready” level “it does not make sense for a student to have to both pass college-ready (Common Core standards) as well as college-ready on ACT or SAT in order to gain minimum admission to a university.”
Time will tell if the Common Core may or may not be the bench mark for colleges and universities in determining if a student is college ready, and if, in fact, the ACT and SAT may be replaced.
The important factor is that students will still need to be college ready and, for them to be best prepared, students will still need to practice and be mentored by professionals to achieve the scores they need to get into college.
We offer a variety of programs that will prepare you for college, so if you are interested, please give us a call as we can discuss what you need to do to prepare for the college admission process.