Carol Burris is not only the principal of the year in New York, as chosen by her colleagues, but she knows her statistics.
In this article, she explains Commissioner of Education John King’s magic trick of predicting the scores before the tests were given.
It was magic of the highest order.
And Burris has a brilliant idea about how to close the achievement gap:
“And so to all of the wannabe Kreskins in other Common Core States, here is my plea — align your proficiency cut scores with SATs that predict A+ in college courses. Your proficiency rates will drop to less than 1 percent and then all of the gaps will close. It will be the greatest disappearing act of all time, and perhaps then we can end the show and get back to the business of teaching kids.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That has been my question. Amazing how he knew the percentage that it would likely drop and then…voila…it did.
Louisiana’s John White has been singing “The Lower Scores” hard rock tune for quite a while. Jindal keeps reassuring the business leaders that this hard wired high stakes testing will certainly rid our schools of everything harmful by ridding us of our public schools.
In the running for this year’s Cecil Rhodes Creative Statistics Prize.
I have always found it “interesting” that, in Ohio, each year the cut scores are changed, yet, there is AYP that “shows” (beyond a shadow of a doubt) whether a student actually has made a year’s growth. Different tests. Different criteria. Different cut scores. And, teachers don’t find out anything until 4 months later. There must be some kind of magic taking place in Columbus.
Maybe instead of this being some vast conspiracy, King just took a look at Kentucky’s scores and made some inferences.
http://eyeoned.org/content/how-will-nyc-students-fare-on-the-new-exams_456/