In following the MLB draft back in June, I was amazed at how much attention and money was spent “breaking down” every player: how they run, throw, hit and pitch. They were examined by  their strengths and weaknesses. Everything depended on getting things right for both the team and player. The stakes were high as each MLB team got the chance to select their prospects. Yet with all the analysis, there are going to be plenty of mistakes. Some “can’t miss” prospects will miss, and others who were picked in one of the last rounds of the draft will eventually become stars. Most fall somewhere in between. Having standards that try to measure the likelihood of a player’s success on the baseball field is inexact at best.

So it is with the Common Core State Standards, the latest set of standards schools around the country are beginning to launch in hopes that it will predict career success.

“Common Core clearly pinpoints the higher level students opposed to working to build a system where everyone is successful,” senior Mati Moes said.

Yet, understanding what makes people successful so it can be replicated with certainty is as impossible with baseball players as it is with students, and testing to see if someone is measuring up to the standards will produce mixed results at best.

“I think the idea of Common Core in general is great, except for the fact that it expects too much of every student,”  Moes said. “I don’t see it doing well in the future because it is setting a standard for every student to reach and not all of us can get to that point.”