Well, at this point in many states transitioning to Common Core, kids are getting tested on things they have not been taught. So scores will go down compared to when they were tested by state standards.
Common Core will mean spending more time on fewer subjects so students can learn at a deeper level. Skills are emphasized as well as content knowledge. Students will have to write and speak more -- they will be routinely required to explain how they arrived at an answer or a conclusion. There will also supposedly be more real world texts, problems, and projects, so kids will hopefully be more fully engaged. And in fact, it if it works, it will make them more prepared for college and the world, where you are expected to think, speak and write. All this is old hat to educators. But teaching to state standards has meant we have been forced to adopt the most backward and mind-numbing teaching strategies in order to raise standardized test scores.
Students have had to be taught so they could score well on multiple choice exams. For example, they'd learn that the Declaration of Independence expressed the philosophy of natural rights, but they'd never spend time with the text or be taught why it was so revolutionary at the time.
What happened was that the standards in most states were so broad and the consequences for not doing well on the exams so severe that school districts developed teaching strategies that were all about teaching to the test. We didn't actually teach the state standards. We taught the test. Our Districts gamed the state exams and gave us curriculum designed to raise scores. The whole purpose was to teach students tiny bits of what felt like unrelated knowledge while managing behavior when the understandably bored students were tempted to act up. So Common Core will be a real step up from that.
I have no doubt that Common Core is going to make a lot of textbook, tech and testing companies rich at the expense of school districts and taxpayers (and teachers and students). I imagine implementing it is going to be a mess until it's fine tuned by real practice and real feedback (which they should have gotten before implementation). I also think there is going to be more resistance than usual for a number of reasons. Even so, I do think it's a change in the right direction.
To answer your question, if it is implemented effectively, I think kids will hate school less although the later in their educational career they are, the more difficult it might seem. Kids should be less bored. In truth students -- humans -- like to learn, and they know when they've been stretched or when they've just been made to do something meaningless.
You also are referring to the fact that the reading level of texts is getting harder under Common Core, meaning books that used to be assigned in high school will now be taught in middle school. I don't have a problem with that. Kids need to struggle with hard text. And this is in English Language Arts only. Social Science and Science texts will still be at kids' instructional reading level.
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