CCLS and Higher Standards for Alternative Education - Thesis Proposal Example

CCLS and higher standards for alternative education Introduction Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) is the education standard developed by a group of contemporary educators, which describes what the students must know and perform accordingly in each of the grades (Walcott, n.d.). CCLS is expected to help the students in their higher education to understand what they are expected to learn and in the similar manner, assists the parents and teachers in knowing their role of helping the students learn effectively. On the other hand, the higher alternative education comprises of all the educational activities that do not fall under the traditional form of learning practices (Aron, 2006). In this thesis, the “Big Picture” has been considered as one of the higher standards of alternative education program. It is worth mentioning in this context that in the current scenario, many of the schools or educational institutions have adopted the alternative education program so that the students can easily understand their learning responsibilities and struggle to achieve those at their best (Aron, 2006). In the US itself, around 20,000 of the schools have adopted the alternative education programs so that the students who are at the risk of failure can better learn and obtain success in his/ her learning career (Aron, 2006). Thesis statement This thesis is prepared to analyze the difficulties of CCLS and the higher standards alternative education program in the context of one of the forms of the alternative program, namely the “Big Picture”. The thesis will also reveal the facts of the comparison between both the standards of learning, which is prevalent in the contemporary schools and educational institutes. Difficulties of CCLS for alternative education program “Big Picture” Including Oklahoma, various other surrounding states of the US have reported that if the vision of the CCLS is to be implemented completely, the concept of “Big Picture” becomes ambiguous (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 2011). For many years, the education institutions could derive benefits from the “Big Picture” along with the CCLS but it was suggested that unless a common test is conducted on this practice, it will not be transformed into a concrete plan to be implemented in the educational institutes considering its associated difficulties. Contextually, it has also been reported that the big picture standard in CCLS alone is not enough to improve the learning of the students (Daggett et al., 2010). The standard of teaching must therefore be followed with the integration of enough curriculum activities and certain kinds of test, which shall help the instructors to obtain useful information regarding the performance of the student and attaining their learning standards. The other problem that can arise in the implementation of CCLS is the high cost for the adoption of big picture in its learning practices. Many of the educational institutes have stated that the adoption of the CCLS standard requires huge loss of time, effort and also the money (Daggett et al., 2010). Hence, it can be stated that the educators might face problem in implementing CCLS due to its high cost of implementation. Mostly, the smaller schools cannot afford for its implementation along with the difficulty of adoption of CCLS alone (Daggett et al., 2010). Only the teaching of the students through the big picture would not be enough but sufficient curriculum studies and tests at the end of studies are required so that the learning capacity of the students can be analyzed (Daggett et al., 2010). Few of the educational institutions have also identified unknown policy consequences during the adoption of CCLS standard. Such ambiguities often raise complexities in identifying and developing effective education measures so as to suffice the developmental needs of the students, causing massive difficulties for the educators in the attainment of their intended objectives (Daggett et al., 2010). The majority of the students might also face problem due to the change in the standards of the learning practices. Likewise, the performances of the students will also be adversely affected with the change in the learning standards resulting to weaker performances of the students in his/ her academic career (Daggett et al., 2010). In the US, the involvement of the federal authorities has been considered as one of the basic problems that have obstructed the successful adoption of the CCLS. The federal authorities had adopted the standards as weighted criteria, which gave much of the emphasis on the college career rather than the primary studies program. The US Department of Education further provided huge aid to the development of the standards in the majority of the colleges, which affected the growth and development of the schools and other primary educational institutes. The aforesaid points are few of the challenges that have been faced by the majority of the institutions in the adoption of CCLS standards big picture (Daggett et al., 2010). Difficulties of higher standards for alternative program “Big Picture” The growing concern for the implementation of big picture learning for higher standards of education has given rise to few of the challenges. Among those challenges, one of the vital challenges has been identified as the training and supporting of the principal and staff members of the school for successful implementation of the education system (Washor & Mojkowski, 2013). The design of big picture requires the principals and other staff members of the school to undergo considerable amount of customization and also the effective adaptation of the same. In due course, many of the staff members of the school might not desire to go for certain training and development. The implementation of the big picture through higher learning standards require huge amount of training of all the school authorities including the staff members at a whole. The training of all the staff members including the higher school authorities is done so that both the students as well as the teachers can take the effective measures for gaining knowledge and skill (Daggett et al., 2010). The other challenges that have been observed during the effective adoption in the learning standards is that the higher standards education of big picture is that the system aims to give much of the focus on creativity developments of the students, which also at times become quite troublesome (Washor & Mojkowski, 2013). It is owing to the fact that the big picture learning process requires technology to be embedded along with the learning practice. This technology based learning process might be difficult for few of the schools and institutions as it again requires special training programs and adequate amount of expenses in its implementation (Daggett et al., 2010). The schools need to spent much of the fund in the renovation of the institutions design with integrated technological equipments and train its staff members so that they can efficiently teach the students and help them improve their overall performance standards. The alternative learning, with the use of big picture concept, requires fully integrated advanced technology for the overall development of the students (Washor & Mojkowski, 2013). The above mentioned points indicate few of the challenges, which are faced during the adoption of the higher standard practices of big picture. The basic challenges are the requirement of huge expenses in its implementation, providing training to the principals and staff members in an innovative and different manner. The other challenge that has been frequently observed during the implementation of big picture in many of the schools in the US is the need of technological integration in the learning materials of the big picture practices. The smaller institutions may not adopt this technique of learning as it is quite expensive in nature and sometimes difficult to understand by the students as well. Due to this technical integration, the higher standard big picture focuses on the creative imperatives, which again has been criticized as quite troublesome for the institution adopting the technique (Big Picture Learning, 2013). Thus, it is worth mentioning that the adoption of big picture learning creates complexities in the schools and educational institutions due to its expensive nature and the need for technological integration in its learning materials (Big Picture Learning, 2013). Discussion The above given thesis describes the concept of CCLS and higher standards education for the alternative education program. The thesis has taken big picture as one of the standards of alternative education programs. After the analysis of the challenges of both the standards of education, it has been affirmed that CCLS faces much of the problems in comparison to the higher standards. The big picture learning is an integrated approach of learning and understanding, which improves the ability of the students along with their educators (Big Picture Learning Ltd, 2011). With regards to the education system of the US, it has been observed that majority of the institutions believe CCLS to be the effective technique of learning as it makes the teachers creative so that they can help their students in attaining their learning objectives in an effective manner (Daggett et al., 2010). However, the higher standards possess the basic problem of providing training and development to the principal and staff members. This training and development needs huge amount of expenses, which is sometimes unaffordable for the smaller schools or the educational institutions. But it is observed that CCLS requires tests and surveys before the implementation whereas higher standard does not comprise of any kind of pre-test before the successful implementation (Big Picture Learning, 2013). In a general sense, CCLS can be referred as a practice, which was adopted in the US emphasizing on the matter of what the students must know regarding their study subjects, especially English and Mathematics (Daggett et al., 2010). On the other hand, the higher standards of big picture has developed a model, which can help in keeping track on the progress of the student and also for identifying the standards that have been attained by each of the students. The higher standard follows the twenty matrices that have been developed by the big picture learning practices so that a deep understanding of each step of the study course can be unambiguously followed by both the teachers and the students (Big Picture Learning, 2013). There have been no such differences observed between the learning standards of CCLS and the higher standards of big picture. From a critical point of view, it can be argued that both of them are as equally important in context of the modern day education system in majority of the countries of the world. As per the US Department of Education, it has been denoted that the effective teaching can be delivered to the students with the help of both the standards of learning, i.e. CCLS and higher standards of big picture (Daggett et al., 2010). The big picture learning along with the CCLS standard provides the students along with the students to learn effectively and in an efficient manner. Despite of few of its challenges such as inexpensive nature and various complexities in adoption, it has provided ease of learning practices to the students as well as to the educators (Big Picture Learning, 2013). It can thus be concluded that both of the learning standards can be adopted by all the educational institutes of the globe so that both the teachers and students can take complete advantages of the practice for identifying their requirements of learning and work accordingly to meet their basic educational requirements (Daggett et al., 2010). Conclusion The thesis delivers an in-depth detail of the common practices of learning, i.e. CCLS and higher standards of alternative education program i.e. Big Picture. As was noted in the thesis, CCLS comprises of particular difficulties, when concerning its application in the Big Picture, such as the involvement of the federal authorities, consequences of unknown education policies and non- efficiency of the CCLS standard in the improvement of the students’ individual career (Big Picture Learning, 2013). It has been apparently observed that CCLS affects the time, efforts and money of the institutions during the adoption of the method. On the other hand, the higher standards program of big picture faces the problem of huge expenses in the training and development of principle and other staff members (Daggett et al., 2010). Hence, from the study it has been observed that despite of all these difficulties, both of these learning standards have been considered as one of the effective tools, which can improve the learning career of the students and also assist the teachers in understanding the requirements of the students in attaining their learning objectives. References Aron, L. Y. (2006). An overview of alternative education. The urban institute, 1-34. Big Picture Learning. (2013). Training and Support for Principals and School. Retrieved from http://www.bigpicture.org/2008/10/training-and-support-for-principals-and-school-staffs/ Big Picture Learning Ltd. (2011). Far More Than Just Tuition. Retrieved from http://www.motiv8.co.nz/ Daggett, W. R., Gendron, S. A., & Heller, D. A. (2010). Transitioning to the common core state standards and next generation assessments. United States of America: International Center for Leadership in Education. Walcott, D. M. (N.d.). Common Core Learning Standards. Retrieved from http://schools.nyc.gov/nr/rdonlyres/d9d76ef9-4c46-40bb-9a74-4f8141a3a1ca/0/commoncore101711_preoct31_final.pdf Washor, E., & Mojkowski, C. (2013). Leaving to learn: how out-of-school learning increases student engagement and reduces dropout rates. United States: Urban Fox Studios. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2011). Common core state standards for literacy in all subjects. Retrieved from http://standards.dpi.wi.gov/files/cal/pdf/las-stds.pdf Read More