Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Making Stronger Efforts In Helping Teachers Adapt To Common Core

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is making stronger efforts to help teachers and educators adapt to Common Core education standards better. Some schools aren't wholly prepared for the transition to Common Core.

Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann said Common Core materials can be challenging for numerous school districts, the Washington Examiner reported. Desmond-Hellmann said teachers spend more time adjusting or forming curriculum in schools, creating lessons and looking for additional teaching materials.

The Gates Foundation was a significant figure in the creation of Common Core years ago. The organization donated tens of millions of dollars to fund the standard and to promote its implementation in schools across the U.S., the Washington Post wrote. Common Core is an educational reform that introduces a more concentrated and clearer set of math and reading skills to K-12 students.

Shortcomings

Desmond-Hellmann admitted that the Gates Foundation didn't anticipate the challenges schools will face under Common Core. She added that the foundation should have provided strong resources and support that public education systems need to properly implement Common Core.

Desmond-Hellmann, however, said Kentucky is seeing positive results in its implementation of Common Core. Kentucky is the first state to take on Common Core five years ago.

How The State Of Kentucky Fared

Funded with federal money from the Obama administration, 54 percent of Kentucky's elementary school students were proficient in the English language in 2015 while 49 percent of the pupils were deemed to have proficiency in math, according to the Hechinger Report. One problem arose in the state despite the improvement: African-American students scored lower than their white peers.

Only 33 percent of black students in elementary schools are proficient in reading and 31 percent have proficiency skills in math. Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice at research group Education Trust, said students need Common Core standards to succeed in college, the news outlet further reported.

As for why black students fared poorer, she said schools in low-income areas populated with people of color usually have low standards for their students. That education inadequacy didn't prepare black students enough for Common Core.

Protests

Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Michigan are all ditching Common Core standards from their education systems, MLive listed. The states claimed that Common Core didn't deliver on its promise to increase students' academic performance and success.

In New York, thousands of students refused to take Common Core-aligned standardized tests, the Daily Caller wrote. Critics claimed that the standardized tests are harder and more time-consuming.