They haven ' t been receiving a good understanding of how math works , that ' s exactly the reason why we implemented these standards , because students were given a word problem and asked to solve it , and they would ask So , do I multiply , divide , add , or subtract the two numbers in this problem ? Common Core has been out for 34 years , so we aren ' t going to see significant improvements yet . Well , I ' ll be blunt and say there aren ' t going to be improvements , and that ' s not the fault of common core . The majority of the classrooms don ' t have curriculum that ' s aligned to the standards , rather districts purchased cheap textbooks from publishers who regurgitated problems from old textbooks and labeled it common core . In addition , teachers are horrifically underqualified to teach the standards to the students . The vast majority of teachers are Bstudent females who became teachers because it allowed them to have time with their family . The only prep they do is open a textbook and do the examples for each chapter . They don ' t have math credentials and took no math in college , and took a math position because it was the only one available in the district .