Children in some countries don’t start school until age 7. Yet here we are suddenly pressured to believe that children in first-grade, usually age 6, must be able to solve math problems or our nation will fall behind the global competition.
Carol Burris, the principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center on Long Island, New York, obtained a copy of the first grade math test. Some of the questions sound reasonable; others do not. Apparently some of Burris’s high school math teachers were befuddled by some of the questions.
See if this makes sense to you.
The more that the public sees of the Common Core and the testing, the less they like it. Parents are getting fed up by demands that they realize are not developmentally appropriate; they don’t like that their children are allegedly “failing” on tests that ask them to solve problems they were never taught.
At some point, Arne Duncan’s fierce denunciation of the Tea Party as the only antagonist of Common Core (which he insists he had nothing to do with as he continues to defend it at every opportunity) will fall flat as he realizes that the problem is the Common Core itself. He loves to tell the public that our teachers and schools have been “dummying” the curriculum and “lying” to our children. But he should ask himself: why does he have such a low opinion of our students, our teachers, our principals, and our schools?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Those test questions are poorly written. And are not required by anything in the Common Core standards.
Seems to me it’s the testing that causes the trouble, and not the Common Core standards themselves.
I think many of us hoped Common Core would show the uselessness of excessive testing; it’s been co-opted.
Agreed. The CC are not that radically different from other standards we’ve had. What’s different are the stakes.
If the CC math standards are all they are supposed to be, why are 3rd graders being introduced to Base 5 when they haven’t mastered Base 10?? It’s so unfair to introduce a new curriculum to a grade that hasn’t had the background of that new curriculum. Every state should have started the implementation on the Kinder level–especially in math. Even history and social studies needs background before you can understand the concepts. And in ELA, you must introduce certain concepts before you can start new ones.
And yes, the testing companies are making it difficult for students and teachers because so much information is being forced down their throats without regard to real teaching.
There is nothing in the Grade 3 standards about base 5. At all.
Thank you for pointing this out, Corey.
There was a post about it on one of the ed pages.
The only time I ever used anything but base 10 was in eighth grade when I switched schools (states) and was introduced to new math. We talked a lot about base 2 because of the ones and zeroes in computer code. I was never sure why we were performing basic operations and I never have had to do so since.
You do all of the bases the same using the powers of the base..however…it is a fun activity and done in usually the 7th grade and up..
For the children who understand Base 10….and how to compute powers it is fun …to them like a fun math game..
You do not grade the kids on different bases….use it as just a hook..
However, with the CCSS…you can do none of the fun stuff as you are simply trying to shove stuff and too much of it down the kids throats..
CCSS is the biggest waste of money and time on the face of this earth..The first grade math test is absurd and someone certainly mixed up tricky with critical thinking.
The test is a piece of junk..
Lawsuits parents…asap….
Anything you get graded on does not count as strictly “fun.” At least that is the way I felt about base 2. It was not treated as fun either. (I feel like I should “harumph” a couple of times now, so I really sound like a disgruntled old bag.)
Understanding base 5, or any other non-10 base, involves knowing the multiples of any given integer. For instance, 121 in base 10 equals (1×1) + (2×10) + (1×100) or 121. So 121 in base 5 equals (1×1) + (5×5) + (1×25) or 51.
I remember taking progressive math tests in 5th grade that involved multiplying and dividing by 2,3,and 4; then 5; then 6, and then 7,8, and 9. We didn’t get different base systems until junior high.
I taught high school English for 11 years, and I’d be willing to bet that plenty of my students wouldn’t know how to decode a number in a base other than 10. To ask this of 3rd graders seems pretty intimidating.
But then the Common Core isn’t really about raising standards of education as much as it is about raising revenues for the educational-industrial complex.
Zorro
121 Base 10 = 441 Base 5.
You can not use any digit greater than 4 in Base 5
************************************************************************
Goes just like Base 10 …
121 base 10 (One group of 100’s….2 groups of 10’s..1 left over)
*************************************************************
121 Base 10 = ________________what in Base 5
(Four groups of 25’s…..4 Groups of 5’s…..1 left over)= 441Base 5
*********************************************************************************
121 Base 5 =_______________________what in Base 10
1 group of 25’s….2 groups of 5’s and 1 left over = 36 base 10
I see your error is careless..You used 5 x 5 instead of 2 x 5..but I will keep my post anyway so others may find errors in mine..
Neandrathal – thanks for the correction. It should be 36, not 51. I’ve been away from math too long I guess. Too much English. I switched over to the other side of my brain.
I’m sorry. Neanderthal.
I suspect that the post schoolgal references confused skip counting by 5 and working in base 5. Such is the state of mathematics education.
Wake up and smell the scam.
The confusing, convoluted style of these test questions come right out of the Sarah Palin online translator.
These questions are not the result of poorly constructed test items. That would be impossible given the checks and balances that Pearson must have in place.
These are deviuosly written to ensure failure.
These are tests written to promote the lie that America’s public schools are failing.
These are tests written to make Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and all of their corporate cronies a fortune by selling solutions to the problem they created!
Forget a civil suit, this smacks of extortion. Institutionalized criminal activity. The perptrators should face jail time.
Love it..You are so right!!
Interesting claim but merely an assertion at this time. How do we go about proving it? Does Pearson have a Jeffrey Wigand type? One would hope.
Probably hard to prove. Expert testimony by psychometricians and child development specialists would certainly make a case for neglegence. Writing exams that seriously affect professional educators, administrtators, and students demands a very high level of resposibility. Clearly the responsibility to write a clearly worded, delevopmentally appropriate exam has not been upheld by Pearson. Items should test the content of a standard – not the ability of a student to parse distorted syntax or to infer the opinion of an author.
NYSED still refuses to release the 2013 math and ELA exams with bogus claims of test security. Under NCLB the Pearson math and ELA exams were copied for review purposes on a regular basis with no issue. Old Regents exams are online and were routinely copied for review as well.
The idea of a whistleblower is intriguing. More pressure is probably needed. Much of this CCSS reform has been accomplished with zero upfront transparency. Many parents are still unsure about what is happening.
Claims of test security? What are we now, the KGB? That’s another lawsuit — either against the State for contracting away my right to actually see my child’s work product, or against Pearson for holding our children’s tests and work product hostage under the guise of security or trade secret protection. Let them claim copyright rights. I don’t care… I have no desire to copy and disseminate their ridiculous tests for my own pecuniary gain. But trade secret protection for a completed test? Give me a break.
What are we now, the KGB?
yes. We now have a centralized, totalitarian Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, and democratic processes for deciding upon what will be taught to our students, when, and how have been entirely circumvented.
Good point, Metro, but the whistle has already been blown (read Todd Farley’s “Making the Grades,” postings on Huffington Education, & the December 27th post here, on Diane’s blog, “An Interview w/Todd Farley.” )Also, there’s another former Pear$on employee who has similar writings (someone out there help–can’t recall his name)–numerous times–& Arne & his henchmen don’t want to do anything about Pear$on–EVERYONE is making big buck$ off their $cam tests. I believe that, in NY, there is/has been an investigation into Pear$on wining/dining state ed. officials, which had also been called into question in IL (a complaint was made to the AG but,of course, nothing was done).
Therefore, the recourse is for parents–EVERYONE–to OPT OUT
THIS YEAR. It truly is the only way to stop this madness.
NYS Teacher,
Psychometricians would be witnesses for the defense. They will defend tooth and nail that their tests and evaluation tools are valid and reliable when they are not. (See how Bernie1815 insists that we can make these instruments accurate and use them for fair and just assessments).
Psychometrics = phrenology = eugenics = blood letting = homeopathy.
Deborah
Math, ELA, and Science teachers who scored these exams had to sign legal non-disclosure agreements. In fact scorers were never allowed to view the complete exam. Those of us who dared look when we administered them were flabergasted.
I won’t be surprised if copies of the 2014 exams get leaked to the public/press. The extraordinary veil of secrecy surrounding these tests is unprecedented and should raise some red flags.
The paranoia in making teachers sign non-disclosure statements is beyond pathological. I would venture to say that each parent interested in the tests is interested in them solely as they relate to his/her respective child. My argument would be that the test is part of my child’s education record and that, therefore, under FERPA — if I even had to cite to a law to see my child’s records — they are rightly mine to see.
I wNew York State’s Freedom of Information Law (Public Officers Law §87 et. seq. ) allows members of the public to access records of governmental agencies. FOIL provides a process for the review and copying of an agency’s records. More information about the Freedom of Information Law can be found at: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/foil2.html.
Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Requests
Freedom of Information Law requests for State Education Department records may be made by:
Mail:
Records Access Officer
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Ave, Room 121 EB
Albany, NY 12234
Phone: 518-408-1818
Fax: 518-473-2827
onder if the Pearson exams are classified as “state records”
In which case:
Should read: I wonder if the Pearson exams are classified as “state recored”? If so . .
Did you see questions 1, 8,. and 12.
In my lifetime of writing test questions….I have neer seen anything as absurd as these questions.
Hi NYS Teacher
I read your posts below on the secrecy of the tests.
Same way in my state…down south here.
They spend more money on secrecy than does NY..
If a teacher looks at a test..they could be fired…
They have in the instructions to the students that they are not allowed to say anything to anyone about the exam…
Yeah right..
I think the parents should know that they can go to the Department of Public Instruction after one of those End of Year Exams and ask to see the exam….
Hey Parents…demand to see your child’s exam..
I hope every single parent goes and makes this demand..
Have you had time to patent that “Sarah Palin online translator.”
We need one of those…especially now as I see her all over the news with her scattered comments..
I teach 1st grade and I absolutely HATE common core. It is not developmentally appropriate in Math, ELA, etc. I speak out against the common core all the time. I even told my superintendent at a mtg., that the part of cc that I am most familiar with: K-3, is definitely NOT developmentally appropriate. But teachers professional opinions don’t seem to amount to anything these days (and this is even my 23rd year of teaching). It is sad how many people here have “drank the Kool-Aid” and just think that cc across the board is the “end all, be all”, especially the principals, vice principals and even our state commissioner of education here, it’s pathetic!
If I may ask, what state? As our DOE people and our district and school administrators act like they have drunk the koolade because they fear a state takeover or a lowering of our district evaluation, which due to NCLB has already had to “”re-organize” our elementary schools because of test scores.
Rest assured that your 23 years (like my 20) mean absolutely squat in these folks minds (if you can give them credit for having a “mind”).
KY
On what do you base your statement that the standards are not developmentally appropriate? These standards are based, in part, on what successful countries expect of their students. Unless students in these other countries develop differently than ours, I think developmental appropriateness is not the problem. They are probably not appropriate based on their experiences, and they are probably not appropriate given the mathematical pedagogical backgrounds of some teachers (meaning they haven’t been provided appropriate professional development). But both of those factors can (and should) change.
Corey, kids differ. These invariant, inflexible standards [sic] do not.
Of course kids differ. And the standards are listed out for each grade level, and they, of course are unchanging. That’s why they’re called standards. The problem is in what’s done with them. The standards should provide a guide to the kinds of things we should be able to expect of students (understanding that kids are different) and the kinds of experiences we should be providing them.
The problem is when testing makes them inflexible. The standards as a guide are fine. The standards as a list of things all kids must do or be seen as failures, are not fine.
I would like to know what countries are using our CC$$ besides this one. At a board meeting I was informed CC$$ was internationally benchmarked. I have yet to read of any other country using engageny. Does anyone have some articles on this subject??
“These standards are based, in part, on what successful countries expect of their students. ”
I must have missed this memo.
Can you tell me more about this part of the process?
Which countries? How and why were “our” standards arrived at with regard to international standards (Why were those countries chosen, what did we keep, throw out?, do they also insist on frequently testing the children on their standards?) ?
Do you have some articles on the international aspect of CCSS development?
Thanks
The claim that the CCSS has been internationally benchmarked, is BOGUS.
Coleman and Duncan make the unsupported claim – whre’s the evidence?
Sorry, I don’t know the details. The claim did not come from Duncan, it came from Bill McCallum, the mathematician and mathematics educator who was the head of the writing team.
But standards are not something that it’s practical to field test, so they borrowed from standards of countries that beat us in international comparisons. That actually seems like a reasonable thing to do.
Well said, Corey!
And, of course, any standards that we have should be living documents, continually subjected to critique and revision, as well as to competition.
Standards certainly can be field tested, and they can be subjected to expert critique, as these were not.
I know many, many curriculum developers who, having worked with the “standards” in ELA, can point to many, many problems with them.
Well, you CAN field test standards, but test them for what? Standards are an agreement about what we think kids should know and be able to do. (In this case, they seem to be a DISagreement!)
If all kids can do all the things outlined in the math standards, they’ll be in pretty good shape for college or the world of work. And there will be no achievement gap since they can all do it.
So the question, to me, is not whether the standards have been field tested, but whether they are reasonable things to expect of students. If we decide that they are, then we need to talk about how to help students achieve them. That’s where the work in reducing the achievement gap comes in, too. How do we get kids to meet the standards, and how will we know when they have?
That’s where assessment comes in. We need assessments (tests) to see how our students are faring. But we don’t need these tests to be hammers. We don’t need them to have high stakes attached to them, for students, for teachers, or for districts. And it would be nice if those tests were not crappy.
And I totally agree with the assertion that any set of standards should be a living document.
” These standards are based, in part, on what successful countries expect of their students. ”
Corey
If you, “don’t know the details” how can you make the claim.
” . . . they borrowed from standards of countries that beat us in international comparisons.”
Corey,
Seriously?
I’m guessing you don’t know these details either.
.
As I said, I’m going by what Bill McCallum said. Here is his quote:
“This is eminently sensible. Standards are an agreement; you can’t field test an agreement. You can field test curriculum and assessment based on the agreement, and at some point you may want to revise the agreement as a result of what you learn. But field testing the standards themselves would have meant not having common standards; and so would have told you nothing about the advantages or disadvantages of having common standards. The only way to field test the standards would be to have some parallel United States, just like ours, but where different common standards were adopted. And follow it for 10 years.
In fact, we did do the closest thing we could do to field testing: we looked carefully at standards of high achieving countries and states. You could think of this as a sort of observational study, which is what you do when a field test isn’t feasible.”
Then he followed another question with: “But I agree that the idea of field testing standards is not quite as infeasible as I suggested in my post; i.e., you don’t literally need a parallel universe. However, I don’t know of any country or state that has done what you suggest. They’ve done what we did: build on previous experience, the wisdom of practice, and the knowledge of teachers and scholars.”
This link can provide some more details. It’s at the same site as a link I posted elsewhere in this comment section. http://commoncoretools.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ccss_progression_frontmatter_2013_07_30.pdf
http://hrd.apec.org/index.php/Mathematics_Standards_in_APEC_Economies
Corey….Do you teach? If so what? Are you a child psychologist??
If you take a look at that first grade test and those standards they in no way parallel Finland’s expectations..
Do you have children..Do you have a first grader or a kindergartner..?
How long have you been teaching if you teach??
They are inappropriate..
I beg to differ with you and I am Math……………
Teachers have been trained correctly in this country…..
Teachers are now going to be trained to Teach A Test of Age Inappropriate Standards…..
I need to know your age…your position….how long you have been in your career etc before I can even think of arguing with you…
I’m just trying to inform you and others what I understand about the process that went into them and point to some resources. A lot of accusations and hysteria have grown up around the standards and I think some of it is unfounded. Some of it is legitimate. But there seems to be a lot of concern that the whole process was secret, and that’s not the case. So before people complain about the methodology, at least be informed.
I’ve been teaching high school mathematics for 19 years and I have 3 children. I’ve served on the board of directors of the Wisconsin Mathematics Council, and have consulted on high school and college statistics textbooks. I’m not an early childhood expert so I’m not going to debate about whether particular standards are age appropriate or not.
I do think that some people read the overview of standards for a particular grade and panic, but when I look at the examples of what the standards mean, they seem much more reasonable. Is fluency in subtraction to 10 beyond first graders? Not by my experience, but my kids are pretty good at math. If you think it is beyond first graders, is it because of development or because they haven’t had the proper scaffolding leading up to it? That’s a tougher question to answer.
Corey:
I value your insights into the CCSS development process and your level-headed assessments. Please continue.
As far as teachers being trained correctly in this country, I’d have to disagree with that. Especially in the lower grades. How many teachers go into elementary school teaching to avoid having to take any mathematics? http://carnegie.org/news/press-releases/story/news-action/single/view/us-teachers-not-well-prepared-to-teach-mathematics-study-finds/
And, again, on what do you base your assertion that the standards are not age appropriate? You saying so doesn’t make it true. Can you point to some research that backs up your statement?
Corey:
Good points. How does one define “age appropriate” given the variance in capabilities and readiness. I have 3 children – the same number as Piaget – none of whom are particularly gifted. One was ready to read and read at 4+, one at 5+ and the youngest at 6.
Bernie, that’s a good question that would need to be answered before deciding whether something is (or is not) age appropriate. And I think it would depend on what we plan to do with it. Do we aim the standards at what students should be learning and experiencing, or at what they should be able to master? I’m not convinced those who wrote the standards and those who write the tests are seeing eye-to-eye on that.
Everyone who took child psychology knows that a child’s brain is not ready for the abstract until the age of 11 or 12..
This test is tricky and was made so the students would fail.’That means you spend more money on Test Prep from the Giant Book Companies..
The worksheet is not tricky: Too many items are so badly written they are incoherent.
Piaget is not the last word in child psychology. I see a lot of comments regarding the developmental appropriateness of the Common Core that seem to rest on Piaget’s stages. Would also be interested in an analysis of the Common Core through the current theories of child psychology.
I think this depends on what you mean by abstraction and what percentage of students you are speaking about.
Not only does Arne Duncan have a low opinion of our students, our teachers, our principals, and our schools, he obviously thinks little of us as parents. Has he completely forgotten that WE are experts on our own children? That WE always will have a greater responsibility and vested interest in our own child’s future than any government or government official? That WE have a constitutionally fundamental interest in raising and educating our children, and protecting our children from harm?
Has he forgotten that federal law requires that parents be afforded “substantial and meaningful opportunities to participate in the education of [our] children.” 20 USC § 6301(12). Congress saw fit to acknowledge, include, and respect “us.” What can’t he?
Or, that no two children learn exactly the same way. As the Supreme Court has acknowledged, “The educational opportunities provided by our public school systems undoubtedly differ from student to student, depending on a myriad of factors that might affect a particular student’s ability to assimilate information presented in the classroom.” Board of Education of Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176 (1982) (special education case).
Finally, this: the NY Court of Appeals has stated, “It is the natural right, as well as the legal duty, of a parent to care for, control and protect his child from potential harm, WHATEVER THE SOURCE and absent a clear showing of misfeasance, abuse or neglect, courts should not interfere with that delicate responsibility.” Roe v. Doe, 29 NY2d 188 (NY 1971) (emphasis added). Neither should any branch of government.
Deborah
You have identified the achilles heel of the CCSS reform movement
so eloquently – and sprinkled it with an appropriate amount of outrage.
Parents love their children too much to let this happen.
Superb!
Ditto to the infinite Power…and beyond..
Well said, Deborah!
I love parents like you…
Parents like you are Parents who do love their children!
It’s the “back-mapping” of standards which makes me question the CCSS the most. It makes no sense from a child development perspective. Remember, too, that children this year are being asked to learn concepts that they have not been introduced to progressively over several years. Last year, first-graders in my system needed to be able to count to 100. This year my second-graders began the year counting by 60s to 1,440 (I kid you not), and are now counting by tens to 1,000 and greater. We are seeing kids who now cry when they do their math homework or who don’t want to come to school because they feel “dumb”. One little guy in my classroom, when asked to count by tens past 290, looked at me incredulously and said, “I don’t even know what you are asking me!” How exactly are we to get children to like math and be successful with it if they already at the tender age of 6 or 7 have realized that it does not make sense to them and they are not good at it?
The Common Core will narrow the achievement gap, Diane. That’s the latest sales pitch from the ed reform marketing shop:
“The achievement gap between Ohio’s white and African American students has grown.
Chad Aldis, the Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy for the Fordham Institute, said he’s a little disappointed in Ohio’s overall outcomes, especially because the knowledge gap in both math and English between the state’s white and African American fourth graders has slightly increased.
“That gap is already way too big,” Aldis said. “Our achievement gap is wider than the national average in both of those categories, which is something we need to continue working on addressing.”
According to this year’s results, Ohio’s students rank slightly above the national average in all areas, and haven’t shown any significant improvement over their 2011 scores.
Aldis thinks the recent adoption of a new set of learning expectations known as the Common Core will help challenge all of Ohio’s students and put them on a more even playing field with students from traditionally higher performing states.
Aldis said he hopes to see at least a modest increase in the next round of NAEP test scores.”
After more than a decade of market-based ed reform in Ohio including a completely unregulated charter school industry, vouchers and gutting public school funding, the Fordham Institute can’t explain why reform isn’t “working” so they simply move the goalposts and say we now need the Common Core.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2013/11/11/ohionaep-results-show-ohios-achievement-gap-has-grown/
I was particularly struck by these remarks from the above linked article, in order:
[1] “If you read Commissioner John King’s Powerpoint slide 18, which can be found here, you see that the Common Core standards were “backmapped” from a description of 12th grade college-ready skills. There is no evidence that early childhood experts were consulted to ensure that the standards were appropriate for young learners. Every parent knows that their kids do not develop according to a “back map”—young children develop through a complex interaction of biology and experience that is unique to the child and which cannot be rushed.”
[2] “We also know that the standards were internationally benchmarked. We are told continually that we are “falling behind.” Yet the age at which students begin school varies from nation to nation.”
[3] “In the United States, students begin Grade 1 at the age of 5 or 6. In Finland, students begin Grade 1 at age 7. In Singapore, students begin Grade 1 at age 7 after two years of kindergarten.”
[4] “But we must recognize, especially given that Singapore’s standards were used to develop the Common Core, that we are asking our young children to engage in intellectual tasks for which they may not be developmentally ready.”
The CCSS cannot stand scrutiny. The above lines are enough to throw them out completely.
I ask every viewer of this blog to read the entire piece by Carol Burriss [aka KrazyAdmin].
😎
Read it and agree 100%.
CCSS will not withstand the legal scrutiny heading its way.
I hope you are right. There are so many possible — and one can only hope viable — legal challenges (and I desperately want to help mount them), from common core as a federal curriculum violating State’s rights under the Tenth Amendment, to whether RTTT is legally authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, to due process violations when our school districts run out of money or are bled dry having to pay for all the unfunded RTTT mandates, to whether Duncan’s revision of the FERPA regulations was permissible and/or within the spirit of FERPA, to challenging inBloom and privacy violations, to challenging whether contracts entered into for RTTT grant money were adhesion contracts, etc., etc., etc.
Corey: I need a course from you on what the common core “standards” actually say:
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/1/introduction, let alone the poorly written test questions. For example: Question 1 places the whole at the end and asks for a missing part, but incorrectly states that 5 is the PART I know????? Is 5 the PARTS I know? Is 6 on a cup the whole of what? Are the parts pennies? And what is in the cup, looks like liguid not pennies? Perhaps if we had teachers designing the measurements for poorly written common core requirements instead of a rush to force states to buy something they don’t know anything about either, both the common core and the measurements would be more developmentally appropriate. Remember the Piagetian experiment of conservation, the preoperational stage of most six year olds?
Question 1 in that test makes absolutely no sense to me. What’s with the picture of the (are they coins) and then a cup? It’s nonsense. Question 12 asks for a related subtraction sentence, but they are all addition sentences. Number 11 was marked wrong, but it looks like the student did it correctly, but apparently not erasing the 6 when he or she replaced it with a 5. The picture shows understanding.
The document you linked shows the overview, but the overview itself is not enough. One quick example: Subtract within 20 is an overview. In the standards, it says: Add and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10. That second part is pretty important for both teachers and test writers to understand. When you look at the standards, pay attention to the “For example” parts. That gives a pretty good idea of the level actually expected.
The draft versions of the Progressions Documents are pretty helpful, too (and feedback is invited). Here’s one example: http://commoncoretools.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ccss_progression_nbt_2011_04_073_corrected2.pdf
More are available at http://ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions/
Sorry, that link you provided does have the full standards, I just needed to follow the links in the menu bar on the left.
thanks, but what about a course on understanding what the common core actually says?
I don’t know of any courses that are comprehensive. Something may exist. There are always offers of courses in my inbox, but I’m skeptical of the quality of most of them as they seem to be interested in must making money.
I have facilitated professional development courses for teachers on the data and probability CC standards for high school. I’m not sure a course is needed. How about an online discussion? It might be just as fruitful. Probably more. Pick a topic, read the standards, read the progressions document, and discuss.
“Perhaps, if we had teachers designing the measurements for poorly written common core requirements instead of a rush to force states to buy something they don’t know anything about either, both the common core and the measurements would be more developmentally appropriate.”
The first fallacy of your suggestion is that one can logically design “measurements” of the teaching and learning process. We can design assessments that sort and separate, rank and stack but those aren’t “measurements” but an ordered scale. An ordered scale is not the same as a measurement. Parts of the teaching and learning process may be placed on an ordered scale but that begs the questions of accuracy as it is not a true measurement.
The second problem is the “Doing the wrong thing (tests based on the CCSS) Righter (teachers making supposedly better test questions.”
“Doing the Wrong Thing Righter”
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people from trying to do the wrong thing righter.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management/administration consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he wisely noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
Thanks, but measurements are whatever we use to decide what students know and can do. Evaluation puts a value on it. A teacher designed report card would be a measurement of what the student knows and can do based on what the teacher has taught. An evaluation, which I eschew, would decide whether it is A or B or what ever the need for a grade is!
Ah yes, I believe those are five “Pearson” mint paddies. Talk about a little subliminal messaging there. Now why a person would put a mint paddy in a measuring cup I do not know.
I have seen the teacher’s questions in the past.
They have a script to follow and you can bet their questions for which they are paid less than minimum wage…are just as bad..
If the Power Test Writing Critics from the DOE does not approve your question..it is thrown out..If enough of your questions are thrown out..you are cut from the test writing group…so the teacher finds out very early on to Please the Testing Hierarchy and comes up with the Tricky Crappy Stuff that measures whether you can guess..
Lest there be any confusion, this seems to be some sort of practice test, not the actual high-stakes test. However, this practice test is an excellent illustration of the ways in which the CCSS distort curricula and pedagogy. In both math and ELA, publishers attempt to prep kids for the tests by giving them these questions keyed to the “standards.” Instead of starting with a coherent learning progression, publishers start with the list of standards themselves and attempt to work through these, “covering” them all. Every educational publisher now begins every project not by asking, “How best can we teach X?” but, rather, by making a spreadsheet with the “standards” in one column and the place where each “standard” is covered in the next. The “standards” become the curriculum. If the “standards” were a learning progression, then this would make some sense (though it would still be a mistake to set in stone any bullet list of standards). But the standards are not a learning progression (though the math ones are closer to being a learning progression that the ELA ones are).
We’ve created a situation in which the tests and the “standards” drive everything. Curriculum and pedagogy both get dramatically distorted as a result. And, innovation stops cold because teachers, curriculum coordinators, and curriculum developers don’t have the ability, anymore, to make curricular and pedagogical decisions based on a) current scientific understandings of the cognitive science of learning, b) knowledge of students, c) best practices in the teaching of these subjects, and d) what, in particular, is being studied in a given unit. Instead, they have to hew to a predetermined outline, the “standards,” developed by a group of amateurs at the behest of a group of plutocrats and not subjected to any sort of rational vetting–to national discussion and debate and to field testing.
People in the “reformer” camp simply do not understand the extent to which these invariant, predetermined “standards” warp teaching by putting the cart before the horse. Testing, including the outcomes to be measured, should follow from, not drive, curricula and pedagogy. And all should be tailored to the students to be doing the work. I have reviewed many, many hundreds of CCSS lessons and practice tests. And what I see, again and again, is lessons and tests that do not attend properly to the materials to be learned but, rather, distort those materials by attempting to view them through the lens of “standards” that don’t quite apply or that were poorly framed. This is a HUGE problem with the CCSS in ELA. Instead of attending to whatever needs to be attended to in order to make sense of a given selection, teachers and students attend to some set of skills from the CCSS bullet list and end up viewing the selection not as an act of unique invention and communication but as an exemplar of items from the CCSS list. Very commonly, essential concepts or skills for understanding a selection will not be covered because those are not in the CCSS bullet list for the particular grade, unit, chapter, or whatever. And, of course, the CCSS emphasis on skills in ELA breezes right over the most essential part of reading well–immersion in the very particular “world of the work,” experience of that world, for it is that experience that has meaning. The CCSS in ELA encourage the sort of teaching that reduces works of literature to identification of literary techniques and so undercuts the WHOLE PURPOSE OF READING. We do not read Emerson’s “Brahma” in order to practice our “recognizing parallelism” skills. We read it because Emerson has something breathtakingly strange and interesting to say–something that could change the way we view ourselves and the conditions of our lives. We read it because it is recognized as a classic of the world’s “wisdom literature.” Or perhaps we have students of American literature read it because it shows the connection between American transcendentalism and the Vedanta philosophy of the Upanishads–as an example of a merging of intellectual horizons. But in the CCSS era, we will read it, if we read it at all, because it exemplifies standards CCSS.ELA.RL.11.x and y. Literary texts are reduced, by the CCSS, to the list of literary techniques that they exemplify. And that’s the worst possible approach to teaching literature.
Don Marquis ends his poem “The Old Trouper” with this line: “Come, my dear. Both of our professions are being ruined by amateurs.” U.S. education is being ruined by the amateurs who created the CCSS.
This particular example is a practice test. However, NY administered the actual high stakes (for teachers, administrtaors, and schools – not students) Pearson assessments in April 2013. Both teh math and ELA exams contained equally convoluted and confusing items. On day two of ELA testing virtually every student was unable to properly complete the test in the 90 minute limit (3 hours if you had an IEP).
These tests did not just present challenging, higher order questions, they were downright mean-spirited. NYSED refuses to release them for a reason that goes well beyond their claim of test security.
There were schools in NYS where at certain grade levels the passing rate was 0% The Rochester school district had on overall failure rate (grades 3 -8, math and ELA ) of 95%!
Keep in mind, cummulatine EOY exams are meant to test for the minimum level of proficiency expected.
Robert…Very well said…Your comments are so deep and correct..
When teachers go to workshops they do not get any useful material.
They get a 3.5 hour lecture on the common core and are told over and over that it is not going anywhere…
Bullsh*t..It will have to go for true education to rebound.
The CCSS is a bullet list. These “standards” appeal to people who think that learning is reducible to a bullet list on a Powerpoint slide. Read Edward Tufte’s “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint” to disabuse yourself of that notion.
There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.
Many, many people have drunk the CCSS Kool Aid. These people are unwitting dupes of a business plan. As Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff put it:
“The purpose of the new standards is to create national markets for products that can be brought to scale.”
E.g., the Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. K-12 education.
Clearly, these amateurish standards were not created in an attempt to improve the quality of U.S. education. They would have been vetted, if that were the case. They would have been approached with the high seriousness that such a task requires. And, the whole notion of having a single set of invariant standards instead of competing, voluntary standards would have been debated, nationwide. But no, these “standards” were purchased as part of the rollout of a particular business plan with the aim of creating a monopoly position in a new market for computer-adaptive curricula. For that plan to work, having national standards was a prerequisite.
For Duncan to accuse teachers, administrators and parents of “lying” to kids is a textbook case of psychological projection, when every word out of that fraud’s mouth is a lie, including “and” & “the” (with apologies to Mary McCarthy).
This is how I see the #4
How much more (or less) is A than B?
Difference = A compared against B
x = A – B
If x is positive, A is more than B, A got blank more than B
If x is negative, A is less than B, A got blank less than B
There’s only one correct equation which applies to both more and less. The sign and the whole more or less bit is in the answer, NOT the equation, as the test makers seem to imply in their convoluted beef-headed thinking.
The correct answer is x=10-5 or 5=10-5, which I suppose could be flipped to 10-5=5, you know, because in six year old algebra the standard notation is to have the variable appear on the right side of the equation……
LOL 🙂
Well Done!!
An aspect of Common Core not even being considered is its reliance on technology. Look at this astonishing article in the Pittsburgh Tribune:
Schools work on computer, keyboard skills so students capable of taking online exams | Pittsburgh Tribune
Skills taught for generations in middle or high school are becoming staples of regional elementary schools, where educators employ colorful games and guises to practice the motor skills many youngsters lack in primary grades.
Little ones have shorter attention spans, said Carla Lagattuta, technology teacher for Allegheny Valley School District. Their ability to stay on task is limited, and often their hands are too small to manipulate keys effectively.
Instead, they learn the location of function keys — enter, space, backspace, shift and handy combinations such as control-alt-delete — and when to use them, Lagattuta said.
Students learn to see the keyboard in halves — one for the left hand, one for the right. They practice usernames and passwords, but specific hand placement comes later, she said.
“How do you teach letter keys when the youngest kids are still learning their letters?” Lynch said. “I can tell them to press ‘A,’ but they may not know what that is yet.”
With the national introduction of exams aligned specifically to Common Core standards, students struggling to master handwriting and basic classroom etiquette will be expected to begin taking non-graded online exams as early as next year, including third-grade reading comprehension tests that require advanced keyboarding skills.
http://triblive.com/news/education/4942089-74/students-computer-online#ixzz2kQO2NeMK
Looking at this exam, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how this exam is being graded. Are the questions that have a circle mean partial credit, considering that the child didn’t attempt the last question and got a big x? (fyi, not a fan of that x psychologically speaking, but I’m not blaming anyone over it, I just don’t like it. And the percent score too).
How does a teacher go about a fair evaluation for partial credit? The child seems to have good fundamentals, but didn’t really understand what some of these questions were asking. Hell, I barely understood some of these questions. And how much time was given to do this exam? 30 min? 50 min? 1hr 30min?
And what exactly was wrong with question 5? Oh wait, i figured it out. I just wrote a wall of text just to delete it. What a crappy exam, it shouldn’t have been given to these kids. I don’t know what else to say.
First, I do not see this as having anything to do with CCSS. This is a very poorly worded, designed and produced worksheet. The teacher needs to write to Pearson and whoever purchased the materials alerting to them to lousy content.
Second, in what ways is this an actual test? Are the results somehow compiled and transmitted somewhere?
Third, despite Valerie Strauss’s admonition, the teacher of this student is clearly not being responsible. The first question does not make sense – period. The test should not have been used. The test should have been rewritten. In addition, the young student understood the non-ambiguous items which should form the basis of any assessment on the part of the teacher.
To continue to assuage some here I apparently have to declare that I am not a K-12 educator, merely the father of 3 kids and husband of a former HS teacher.
Bernie,
I would venture to guess – based on my own experience – that the teacher was required to give this test. I’m sure the materials were purchased by his/her district. I am continually flabbergasted by the junk that Pearson puts off – I vacillate between thinking they are lazy idiots and thinking it’s all part of some greater evil plan! It’s pretty hard to imagine that a company that huge wouldn’t be able to produce a good curriculum. We teachers are constantly shaking our heads in amazement at the Pearson texts, intervention materials, and software we are required to use. It’s painful.
You may be right, but this “test” does not look like a test. It was hand scored, presumably by the teacher.
I went looking for the name of the editor of the Envision Math series, without luck. There has to be some way to contact the Editor to raise issues like this. A sales/account rep would know. It is in there interests to provide a contact person.
Bernie, kids are being subjected to a lot of these CCSS practice tests. After all, the whole point of schooling is now to pass high-stakes exams, so it’s not surprising that instruction in math and English has now largely been replaced with test prep. From what I’ve seen, this practice test (that’s what it seems to be) is pretty representative of its class. These materials tend to be dreadful.
Robert:
I need to read the book that this came from to determine how they are using the word “Test”. Many textbooks simply use the word Test to refer to an end of unit test. It may have nothing at all to do with standardized tests.
Bernie, I may be able to find further information on this series but I would like to share this with you: many districts adopt Pearson publications in the hopes of having higher scores on the Pearson-made high- stakes tests. The amount of autonomy given teachers still varies by district, or even school to school, but in many cases teachers are required to use all resources that come with their texts.
This may or may not have been a test….and if it was a test it wasn’t standardized. However, to me that’s actually a problem. In the past, we might have to deal with one high-stakes standardized test each spring. A nuisance, nothing that severely impacted one’s teaching. Then came the benchmark tests…touted as the miraculous predictors of proficiency on the spring tests! Now, at first we treated these benchmarks as just that….they were annoying in that we lost instruction time to give them, but we certainly didn’t worry about preparing for them. Boy, has THAT changed!
Now, the example of this post: most likely part of the math series the teacher uses daily. Not only are we consumed with the spring tests and the benchmark tests, we also gave this curriculum to follow….it totally informs a teacher’s lessons, taking away all autonomy. This poor teacher is probably required to use this sorry test, worksheet, whatever it is; perhaps even prove that he or she used it….all because THIS is how the common core will be tested.
Bernie
The teacher was mot likely told to use this test..
Come on….No teacher in their right mind would give a test like this unless they were told to do so as these questions parallel the real crappy test.
neanderthal100:
You may be right, but the question needs to be asked. How many teachers here would ask their students to do a worksheet/test that they know contains such egregious errors?
They do because they are told to do so..
This is what you say…this is what you use..this is the way you do it..
No kidding Bernie….
I have heard teachers say..OK..we will do exactly what you say…even though we know it is a joke..and they do..
I wonder if Pearson assessmnets administered in NY last April can be accessed through the NY state Freedom of Information Act? Are exams classified as government records?
If so they can be requested:
This is from the NYSED website:
New York State’s Freedom of Information Law (Public Officers Law §87 et. seq. ) allows members of the public to access records of governmental agencies. FOIL provides a process for the review and copying of an agency’s records. More information about the Freedom of Information Law can be found at: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/coog/foil2.html.
Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) Requests
Freedom of Information Law requests for State Education Department records may be made by:
Mail:
Records Access Officer
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Ave, Room 121 EB
Albany, NY 12234
Phone: 518-408-1818
Fax: 518-473-2827
Sample FOIL Request for Records
E-Mail:FOIL@mail.nysed.gov
Fee for Duplication of Records:
SED charges the statutorily permitted fee of $.25 per page for duplication of records requested under FOIL (Public Officers Law §87[1][b][iii]). There is no provision in law or regulation for waiver of this fee. Payment must be made to the NYS Education Department by check or money order. Payment should not be submitted until you are notified that your request is granted and informed of the charge for your request.
Inspection of Records:
SED records are available for inspection at no cost to the public. Copies are available at the statutorily permitted duplication fee of $.25 per page by check or money order made payable to the New York State Education Department. Requests for inspection must be in writing and addressed to the Records Access Officer via regular or electronic mail or facsimile. The Records Access Officer will acknowledge receipt and provide the requestor with the SED staff person’s name, title, and phone number to schedule an appointment at a mutually convenient date and time for inspection. Records or portions thereof which are prohibited from disclosure pursuant to FOIL will be redacted or omitted; the requestor will be notified of the reason(s) for the redaction(s) and of the procedures to appeal to the Commissioner of Education. Inspection of records are by appointment between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM.
FOIL Appeal Procedures:
Any person denied access to a record may within thirty days appeal in writing to:
Commissioner of Education
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Room 111, Education Building
Albany, NY 12234
Sample for Filing an Appeal
I think exam scores are typically treated as confidential. Individual scores, anyway. That’s what I was told when I wanted scores (without names) for ACT tests.
It would be interesting to find out!
I’m wondering if the State’s CONTRACT with Pearson can be obtained through FOIL? Just another item for my to do list…..
Not scores; the tests.
Oh, better yet! I suspect not, though. Tests generally are kept secure because they are reused. Or parts of them are. That way they can maintain reliability.
For 10 years under NCLB the Pearson math and ELA were openly used by teachers for review purposes. Flash back to any middle school copy room and you would see the previous years tests being reproduced for student use. Suddenly under CCSS the Pearson tests went under virtual lock and key.
You should be able to get the contract through a FOIL request.
Here is the information from the RFP that resulted in the contract:
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/compcontracts/10-021/home.html#Description
Here is the link for FOIL requests to the Dept of Education:
http://www.oms.nysed.gov/foil/
NYS Teacher,
I like the way you think. For too long (or at least 2010) few people “in the know” in NYS have spoken up. Especially about tests that have suddenly become “proprietary” property of Pearson. our district has 25 years’ worth of Regents exams, and the NYC library has its own database. FOIL the Pearson tests! If the tests, of course, are not protected by copyright. And enjoy this:
http://www.engageny.org/sites/default/files/resource/attachments/presentation_structures_and_systems.pptx
ugh… The link
Question 13
Johnny took the above test..
How many questions were not on the test if Johnny said 12 question were on the test and this is question 13.?
Explain your answer and illustrate it with a mathematical equation and a 10 step proof.
***********************************************************
Stupid….stupid…stupid test..
How else can I say it….It really is such a bad test.
So Johnny 1st grader made a 45% on this test?
hmmmmmmm
Does Johnny understand that 45%.is an F and an F is Failing and Failing means Johnny is not a good student and Johnny can no longer play outside but must spend 5 hours on homework every night and on the weekends..
“Write a subtraction story”
And who said all the fun has been taken out of education?
Tell you a story bout a man named minus, poor mountaineer had trouble with his sinus.
I bashed my ribs rather badly a few weeks ago. Do you know what uncontrollable laughter does to damaged ribs?
🙂
Need a bit of respite from the Horrors of the CCSS
Thanks TC 🙂
JOHNNY FAILED BECAUSE HE CAN NOT……
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
A LIST OF 8 BULLSH*t’s from the Common Core in an attempt to DEFORM OUR SCHOOLS..
His Teacher-Tester will be fired because of a rotten test!
Johnny really did not fail. The “system” has failed him. On purpose. As teachers, if we don’t stop this insanity EVERYTHING we understand about our society will change. This is David and Goliath stuff.
I have taught first grade in “Floriduh” for 20 years. I have followed Diane for several and have been trying to “enlighten” my fellow teachers of the takeover by corporations. To very little avail. They think it won’t be the death of their own careers.
Watching the humiliation and desperation on the faces of my very talented firsties make my heart break daily. Why on earth should a 6 year old have to balance equations (12-3 = ___ + 5) in November, when they are trying to understand the basic concepts of addition and subtraction? We confuse them with sentence order in math when they are still trying to understand conservation of numbers. Some of my students turned 7 in Sept, Some will turn 7 in July. Do we expect them ALL to master this when they are chronologically not developed enough to understand? Every day I tell them not to give up. Every day I tell them that they are being expected to do more than they should have to at their age. Every day they try as hard as they can. Every day I tell them I am proud of them. Every day I go home sad. They are learning, but are so worried about their grades, which can be accessed on line 24 hours a day by parents, that they become cripple with fear. I have quit worrying about the grades personally. They will understand the concepts when they are ready to. I will just keep teaching child by child the best I can. As teachers we have teach the CC$$ which means throwing too many “ways” to understand simple computations, )how fun to watch them go right back to their fingers), confusing as well as tricking children with the “gotcha ” questions as well as keeping up with our “academic plan”. God forbid should I stray, the curriculum Nazi’s will be at my door. What a great time to be a child, huh?
I have 5 years left and then I am going to turn into one pain in the ass on the behalf of teachers. Where are our retired veteran teachers and why are they not speaking up for their grandchildren’s future?
As teachers we working in a police state. This will spread to our entire society as we become the Orwelian future no one thought could happen. Sci-Fi is just fast forward 50 years.
Diane keep fighting for us. You are our beacon of hope.
JTR
A beautifully written indictment.
As far as retired teachers speaking out, I think most are too out of the loop as this whole reform movement amounted to a sneak attack on children and teachers. Trying to adequately describe the full scope of this disaster is very difficult; much of what we are observing is simply to incredulous to believe for any one outside of the classroom.
JTR & NY Teacher–Here in ILLAnnoy (& many of our retirees have moved to “Floriduh!), we are in the process of fighting for our pensions & health insurance (we DO pay for health insurance, contrary to the lies spewed to the general public by Big Business/the 1% here, but the state is attempting to make it unaffordable, impossible to understand {so the most elderly & incapacitated of us will lose this insurance, as they do not understand/get guidance from the state to enroll & sign for it in a timely fashion}). However, with that having been said, I stand with retirees as “one pain in the ass on the behalf of teachers,” and so do many, many of my colleagues. We,here, are definitely involved in activism on behalf of our active brethren. For example, one wonderful group in Rockford did all the homework, legwork, meeting attendance, community organizing, notetaking & publicizing which resulted in the resignation of their ghastly Broad superintendent! ILLAnnoy retirees stand with you, because yes, WE can…and we WILL.
We are speaking up…………………
We talk to teachers everyday and though we may not have the verbal eloquence of Robert Rendo and Robert Shepherd who are regular posters….we do have Common Sense….
The teachers in the classroom say..”Whatever you do…do not let them know you are speaking for me…do not use my name..do not use my school….”
They are scared rabbits…They are harassed on a daily basis because of a bad test score.”
They work hard Teaching a Test….and they are counting the hours to retirement…some retiring after 20 years…..
Teachers are not teaching…Teachers are Testing…Most of the Teachers that I talk with hate going to work……
They know that the children are being used for Lab Rats and they see the flaws in these age inappropriate standards …….all for the Big Business Profiteers…
Are you kidding? These 8 points are the best and most important part of the standards. These outline the kind of thinking we should be working toward. And these are exactly what this test and so many tests and textbooks completely ignore. They focus on procedures and ignore reasoning. The fact that this test had a bunch of (poorly written) questions that were almost identical shows that reasoning is ignored and procedures are the focus.
Corey
I know the 8 points…Same book different cover for years..
I was referring to the test and the 8 points and how they do not align..
…just as you said..
Go Math! Common Core Math text (Houghton Mifflin or is that another yet another division of Pearson’s at this time?) is not any better than this sheet from Pearson. Pearson’s Scott Foresman Common Core Reading Street workbooks are horrible, too.
The scope of harm being perpetrated on primary students under CCSS in math is (ironically) immeasurable.
“I’ve seen the testing and the damage done, a little part of it in everyone”
Exactly. Love the Neil Young allusion. hate what is happening under Obamacore.
Happened to be Neil’s 68th birthday.
Yes, that’s yet another division of Pearson, as is Prentis Hall. I had no idea until recently they owned so many publishing companies.
Direct from the Finnish National Board of Education website:
Basic education is non-selective
The objective of basic education is to support pupils’ growth towards humanity and ethically responsible membership of society and to provide them with the knowledge and skills needed in life.
Basic education encompasses nine years and caters for all those between 7 and 16 years. Schools do not select their students. Every student is allocated a place in a nearby school, but they can also choose another school with some restrictions.
All school follow a national core curriculum, which includes the objectives and core contents of different subjects. The education providers, usually the local education authorities and the schools themselves draw up their own curricula within the framework of the national core curriculum.
Upper secondary education and training has a dual structure
After compulsory basic education school-leavers opt for general or vocational upper secondary education. Both forms usually take three years and give eligibility for higher education. Vocational education and training is popular in Finland, more than 40 per cent of the relevant age group starts vocational upper secondary studies immediately after basic education. The biggest fields are technology, communications and transport and social services, health and sports.
The selection of students for upper secondary school is based on their grade point average for the theoretical subjects in the basic education certificate. Entrance and aptitude tests may also be used, and students may be awarded points for hobbies and other relevant activities.
Vocational qualifications can be completed in upper secondary VET, apprenticeship training or as competence-based qualifications. The majority of young learners complete their upper secondary vocational qualifications at vocational institutions. Competence-based qualifications are usually completed by adults.
print page
More Sharing Services
Historical overview
Education policy
Early childhood education
Basic education
Upper secondary education and training
Adult education
Higher education
Teacher education
Support for pupils and students
International perspectives
Read more
■National core curriculum for upper secondary education
■Finland: Upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education (Eurypedia)
Brochures
■Finnish education in a nutshell
■The education and research development plan
■Teachers in Finland
■Quality assurance in vocational education and training in Finland
■Education evaluation plan for 2012–2015
■Quality assurance in general
I suggest we forfeit the match
America’s too egotistical to buy into that makes sense. Denial makes it even harder to move forward.
Good Work NY Teacher
Again..you are the brilliant one..
Thanks……
Think Arnie will be interested?
What a fiasco! It is unbelievable. An embarrassing indictment of our whole culture.
I have to wonder what Duncan and Obama would do if their kids brought home this absurd, incoherent Bullsh*t Test with a 45%??????????
First they’d deny it. Then they’d change the cut score…. Then they’d say why it was so wonderful. And then they would spend more money to stamp it “Trade Secret Protected,” seal it, and put it in a vault, in the hopes that it would never again see the light of day. And then they’d repeat the process over and over again.
http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/
Thank you for sharing! I’d love to see this farce come to the attention of more of the public! DIANE, would you consider doing a post on this article?
These math questions are awful, but the released ELA test questions from PARCC and Smarter Balanced are just as bad. Have a look. You will see what I mean. The PARCC ELA questions are particularly convoluted. If I didn’t know better, I would think that the PARCC questions were meant to be some kind of parody of state assessments. The Smarter Balanced materials are so cliched and dull that it will take some doing to keep kids awake during the exams! LOL.
I predict that this whole standards-and-testing movement will come crashing to the ground when the absurd tests currently being constructed are finally given. It will be amusing to watch this happen.
Robert… I can assure you… it will NOT be amusing to the children taking these assessments. I sat in a forum last night (in Nassau County) with Commissioner King. (By the way, NYS Senator Jack Martins did an outstanding job of maintaining decorum during the forum — which he demanded — while also pressing the Commissioner when it was clear straightforward answers were not forthcoming. I think it is fair to say the forum produced the most “dialogue” possible, even though we all knew questions would not answered directly and/or to our liking.) King said that the State was willing to release 20% (or maybe it was 25% — really doesn’t matter) of the test questions given (don’t ask me which questions that represents), and explained that if they released more, they’d have to do more field testing because they’d have to come up with new test questions, and this would cost more money. I shouted from the audience that he had his priorities mixed up. Nevertheless, it made me think — if these questions are, indeed, field tested, and the children taking the ELAs are the ones “vetting” the field test questions, why do the actual questions on the assessments continue to be so outrageous????? Defies logic, no? Either that, or our kids are drinking the Kool-Aid, too.
p.s. I understood your comment and know in my heart that you were not insinuating that it would be amusing to our children. I hope you are correct in your prediction.
As I have stated before, I am not necessarily against CCSSS ( I added the third ‘s’ for “sic”.) I am against the latest assessment monster it gave birth to as well as its spawn of “Common Core aligned” material. Whether the Common Core has certain standards is immaterial at this point. What really matters is what the publishers have done with these standards. My students must perform well on their assessments and if they fail to do so, it’s my head on the chopping block. We are getting considerable pressure to drag our students through the entire program, despite them having little preparation for these new standards. In essence, I am being asked to teach a year and a half’s (or more) material in ten months. Ain’t gonna happen, folks!
Not only are they poorly written, one of them is written at 4th grade reading level as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Index Calculator. So shabby. Shame on you, Pearson!