New York officials are warning parents and the public to be prepared for a big drop in the proportion of students who are proficient on new tests aligned with the Common Core.
The English language arts tests contain vocabulary that most children are not likely to know and the math tests contain concepts that may not have been taught.
Members of the Board of Regents express concern that neither students nor teachers are prepared for the tests or the standards. Some worry that the tests will have a devastating effect in schools that enroll poor and minority students.
The linked article gives examples of test questions.
When Common Core Test results were recently released in Kentucky, passing rates fell and the gaps widened.
I am reminded of Rick Hess’s recent article in which he said that reformers are hoping that the terrible results of the Common Core tests will persuade suburban parents that their schools are awful. They too will then clamor for charters and vouchers.
Read this article about the widespread drop in passing rates that is expected across the nation, and pay attention to Jeb Bush’s gleeful anticipation. Now, former Governor Bush is described as an “education expert,” although most of his time is spent selling technology and privatization. The collapse of test scores and passing rates is good news for his business and his ideology.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s an idea: Why don’t these education experts take the Common Core tests themselves and release their results to the public? I wonder how many of these Einsteins would pass the test that they’ve been shoving down the throats of American children?
That makes so much sense: use vocabulary kids are not familiar with and math concepts that have not been taught – and let’s test them to check for mastery! Then, conclusion that poor and minority kids will REALLY score low. Are they kidding? That is malpractice! This entire education improvement has never been about kids, teachers and learning. It is predictable that we continue to intentionally influence the outcome of these tests to prove that kids are not learning, teachers are not teaching, poor and minority kids are sub par, and more Big$$ needs to be funneled through the hands of Big$ decision makers. What an utter bunch of malarkey! Dr. Ravitch and AFT Prez are supporting such unethical practices in the name of trying to help kids and teachers. Really?
We are to focused on high stakes testing. While I believe the common core standards are good this constant focus on scores and rankings is not. Project Based Learning and engagement cannot be measured by a test score alone. Teachers need to teach and facilitate their students hands on learning and scores will be a moot point. I believe scores are the result of learning content – studying for a test, teaching to a test is not learning content but rote memorization. The reason politicians like test scores is to show ranking because they cannot figure out a creative way to quantify it any other way. As for testing companies its obvious why they like testing.
But the biggest problem with NCLB is that it doesn’t encourage high learning standards. In fact, it inadvertently encourages states to lower them. The net effect is that we are lying to children and parents by telling kids they are succeeding when, in fact, they are not.
Whether it’s lying to parents and children or manufactured crises, the public education doomsday clock advances toward midnight.
Constructive suggestions, anyone? Perhaps a plan? SMART goals? Anything?
The generalizations are glaring! There are millions of teachers and school settings where every child gets what he or she needs. Gifted, ELL, SWD, typical kids, etc. The constant mantra of teacher and student bashing is outrageous! Why don’t we focus on what truly needs our collective attention and actions; we have enough to do. Such as chronic poverty, crime, violence, hunger, children having children, tech divide, politicians behaving irresponsibly, AFT selling us down the river, testing insanity, outsourcing teaching, ‘anybody can teach’……Is that enough to get us started? Our country is kicking the teaching profession to take our focus off the problems. They are the canary in the coal mines and they are taking their last breaths. They are even dying for their children, and we march right on. What type of society are we leaving for our children? Chasing the test score! Does that justify our insanity? It is very hard to continue to have hope, as I reflect on 40 years of personal dedication to educating our kids. Save the canaries! Please!
Save the canaries! Please!
Unions take billions of dollars from teachers. Perhaps they (i.e. union staffers, paid with dues from unionized teachers) could produce a credible plan to move the public education doomsday clock back from midnight.
Or are those staffers only capable of playing politics to get the best short-term deal possible for teachers?
Do our children merit a lower level of stewardship than our thermonuclear arsenal? Can we get agreement on which policies promote (and which policies harm) public education?
Are you serious??? Unions don’t TAKE any of my dollars – I willingly pay them. We do present plans – over and over and over – to legislatures who don’t listen to people who spent years studying and practicing the craft and art of teaching. It isn’t unions who are destroying public education.
While I provided the link, I didn’t attribute and use quotation marks to properly demarcate words of Secretary Arne Duncan. Oops. My point was these contradictory claims need sorted out so progress can be made.
We have watched this train pulling in for months now. Once DoE created a national market with CC standards, it had to create products to sell into it. Testing drives everything else. Tests and curricular materials via tablets, databases on every student and teacher, and more charters, which don’t have any oversight of expenditures.
“Ed Reformers” are very excited about this prospect of mass failure as it will enable a lot of teachers to be fired under the auspices of the new teacher evaluation system imposed upon schools across this nation. We can all “thank” the imposed implementation of RTTT. I am sure TFA is excited about the prospect of hiring an ever-increasing number of recruits to do their two year of service as a “teacher”. What a fine mess this is!
You put your finger on it! Exactly! Who do they think we are, the lowest of the lowest performing college students? Well, that’s the way you treat us, and continue to. We continue to call the Ed-reformers on this, but they continue on their path of destruction. Afterall, the Big$ folks have all the connections, power and $$.
The CT shooting is barely over, and the Big$ folks are feverishly at work again. What a shame.
Common Core = a way to get rid of more public schools, for more investors to get rich off public assets?
Having taught High School Mathematics for 42 years in both NJ and NYS may I say this:
The authors of the common core standards have set schools up for failure! They have simply taken material that was taught in the 9th and 10th grades and pushed it into the 8th grade thus the 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st grades will have to prepare their students by spending much more time on Mathematics and English! Obviously, something will have to be lost in the Elementary grades. What will that be but the Music, Art, History, Science, story time, recess, gym etc.
Is this really what we want for our Children?
“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.”
*Dalai Lama
I teach 5th grade. There are concepts that are 6th, 7th and 8th grade concepts in the grade 5 common core. Implementing the common core “curriculum” when kids are already two years behind in what needs to be taught at their grade level sets up schools, teachers and students for failure. If the common core needs to be used, start it in the lower grades and add a grade each year. As a side note , The kindergarten and early childhood common core program is far to academic and not developmentally age appropriate. I have never seen so many kindergarten students crying in the morning as they do now. It is December and these a kids are not adjusting to school. It is two much work. These young children are not equipped to handle such a heavy academic program. If a child is not “learning ready” they are going to struggle and shut down. The best interests of the children are not the best interests of the children.
Strange, but the Asian students that I taught were equipped to handle such a heavy academic program. Are they genetically different?
You say that the concepts are 6th, 7th, and 8th grade concepts. And that was passed down on a tablet that definitively defined what is taught when?
I agree that it is difficult to up the standards on children who are already behind. Just because people are behind doesn’t mean that they are in the right place. They were behind by the old standards also. Should we keep moving the standards down until no one is behind? Or set standards that keep pace with much of the rest of the world?
And, of course, let’s not forget all the money that is being spent to give tests that measure nothing. And the time taken out of actually learning to test things that measure nothing.
My son is a struggling math student. This Common Core is killing him. It’s not the fault of his teacher or the school, really, it’s that there has not been enough training, there is an appalling lack of materials, and there was not a foundation laid because we all rushed into this mess. I’m disgusted.
… appalling lack of materials …
Teachers and schools have some responsibility to promote sound educational practice. Teachers, principals, superintendents, boards, and school treasurers pay for statehouse lobbyists. Two decades ago, we aspired to be first in the world in math and science.
Wouldn’t nearly 20 years be enough time to think through implementation so students aren’t overwhelmed by (attempted? alleged?) curricular improvements?
Singapore Math materials are promoted in some districts for common core. Are other common core materials equally proven?
You’re kidding, right? Of COURSE “teachers and schools have responsibility” to make sure they are teaching well. That being said, why is EVERY teacher being forced to completely reinvent the wheel without any help? Districts and states are not helping and it’s burning people out. I have a friend who is a math department head who is staying at school until 9:00 pm on many evenings in order to write lessons plans, tests and assignments from scratch. A lot of other teachers are doing the same thing.
And, contrary to your insinuation that we have had 20 years to implement these changes, this was rushed through in the middle of a summer only two years ago. The concepts are in a completely new order from previous materials, so it’s like starting from scratch. For every teacher in the country.
Teachers and parents need to stand together on this issue; unions that support this do not speak for teachers or children. And the only winners will be book publishers, technology providers (for online testing) and private school-takeover organizations. Teachers know that some students will have great trouble performing well on standardized measures of learning. And not because they aren’t intelligent, but because learning is evidenced in so many different ways. Tying these scores to teacher evaluation will make it even worse. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we have some of the best practices and tools at our disposal – i.e. knowledge about how kids learn, differentiated strategies, technology tools – but with the continued emphasis on standardized test scores, we will continue to do the same thing to make those scores go up. We will end up with trained children, but not educated children. We have to pay close attention to the impact of this type of education. My kids (elementary school) were mentally drained and exhausted from school by the time they hit third grade.
Teachers and parents need to stand together on this issue; unions that support this do not speak for teachers or children. And the only winners will be book publishers, technology providers (for online testing) and private school-takeover organizations. Teachers know that some students will have great trouble performing well on standardized measures of learning. And not because they aren’t intelligent, but because learning is evidenced in so many different ways. Tying these scores to teacher evaluation will make it even worse. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we have some of the best practices and tools at our disposal – i.e. knowledge about how kids learn, differentiated strategies, technology tools – but with the continued emphasis on standardized test scores, we will continue to do the same thing to make those scores go up. We will end up with trained children, but not educated children. We have to pay close attention to the impact of this type of education. My kids (elementary school) were mentally drained and exhausted from school by the time they hit third grade.
These New York samples clearly say that they’ve used public domain texts so the ones on the real tests aren’t likely to be similar to these. However, they do say that these are examples of appropriate text complexity, yet the 6th-grade one is only 3rd-grade level according to Flesch-Kinkaid. So what validity is there to how they’re defining text complexity. David Coleman has now said that we should be teaching to the test. Should teachers teach to these items until the real ones come along?
I am a part of an educator’s listserv, and the following was posted from there. The educator who posted this was listening to NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t tell me”, where Common Core Standards were recently lampooned. I think that it’s worth a look at the transcript.
“This week’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me lampooned the common core standards. It’s during the panel, round 2 at about 4 minutes in.
And here’s the transcript (http://www.npr.org/2012/12/15/167292087/panel-round-two)
—
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Luke, new national standards are being implemented in schools across the country. So, “Catcher in the Rye” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” books like that, might well be replaced by what?
BURBANK: So those books, which are still the two probably sort of headiest books I’ve read because they were assigned in fourth grade.
SAGAL: Right.
BURBANK: They’re replacing those with books that are maybe more seen as racially sensitive?
SAGAL: No. No.
BURBANK: Well I guess “Catcher in the Rye” doesn’t really have much of that going on.
KLEIN: You didn’t even read it in fourth grade, did you?
BURBANK: No, I didn’t actually.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: I think we just busted you on not reading one of the two books you brag about reading.
SAGAL: Anybody know the answer to this?
KLEIN: I think I do.
SAGAL: Well, go ahead, Jessi.
KLEIN: Like they want kids to be reading like instructional manuals.
SAGAL: That’s exactly right.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)
(APPLAUSE)
KLEIN: Yeah, good times.
SAGAL: Specifically books like, classics like, “Recommended Levels of Insulation,” by the US Environmental Protection Agency, and that classic, “The Invasive Plant Inventory,” by California’s Invasive Plant Council.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Now, the Common Core Standards, they stress getting students ready for the real world, and that means making sure that 70 percent of what kids read in school will be non-fiction. Because sure, musing about Holden Caulfield’s psychological problems might be fun, but you’re not going to have time for musing during your 35 years as a cubicle drone, so get cracking on that technical manual now is the thinking.
(LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: This means: goodbye Huck Finn, hello “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Those are all titles on the recommended reading list.
BODETT: Actually, it makes perfect sense. I hope on there also are like assembly manuals that were badly translated.
SAGAL: Yes, exactly.
(LAUGHTER)
KLEIN: Here in this classroom.
SAGAL: You know what’s going to happen, the kids aren’t going to apply themselves. They’re all going to wait until the last minute and then go out and get the movie version of the invasive plant directory.
(LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
Total BS. No one in education is going to assign To Kill A Mockingbird – which deals with issues of false rape accusations – or Catcher in the Rye – which is filled with profanity and is regularly subjected to attempts to ban it – to a fourth grade student. Ridiculous.
I think that was a bit of hyperbole and satire on the part of the hosts.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
All part of the privatization plan. Urban schools already labeled failing and being converted to charters, now use CC and teacher evals to target ‘burbs and rural as failing.
This is easy to fix. All the teachers need to come together and refuse to give the tests. If they all refuse to test as a group then not one single group or person will be targeted. As long as school districts go along with the testing nothing will change
On a national level. EVERYONE. WALK. OUT.