I recently posted testing expert Fred Smith’s discovery that several test questions on New York’s Common Core exam had “disappeared.”
Susan Edelman of the Néw York Post read Fred Smith’s article and went searching for the answer. She found it.
“These tests were rotten to the Common Core.
“Student performance on four questions on the much-ballyhooed state English Language Arts exams was secretly scrubbed by state education officials because too many students didn’t answer them or were confused by them.
“After the tests were given last April 1-3, the state decided to eliminate the results of one multiple-choice question on the seventh-grade ELA exam, two on the third-grade ELA exam, and a four-point essay on the third-grade test.
Six of 55 points were whacked from the third-grade test.
“The axed essay question, called a “constructive response,” aimed to gauge a prime goal of the Common Core standards — whether students think critically and write cohesively, citing evidence from a text to support their ideas.
“They produced a defective product, and don’t want you to know about it,” said Fred Smith, a former city test analyst who discovered the missing items.
“In touting an uptick in scores last August, the state didn’t mention the erased results. The number of city kids rated “proficient” increased 2.9 percent from 2013 on the third-grade ELA test and 3.9 percent on the seventh-grade test.”
In short, by removing these four questions, the State Education Department produced a slight increase in scores, which enabled then-State Commissioner John King to assert that the state was making progress.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This makes me mad for two reasons. One: Instead of trying to work with students, the state decided to cut the hard question showing more proof for the argument of starting over instead of working hard. Secondly, so much pressure is put on exams that critical thinking is forgotten about. The article says that, the main objective of common core is to get a student to think and cutting question does the exact opposite. It solidifies the belief of government standardization and not personal thought.
Play with the numbers so they say what you want them to say.
A cynicism so deep and casual…
Require a test that will fail many and provide grist for the “failing public schools” mill. But when you need to make yourself look good, then massage, torture and disappear some of the numbers so you can claim that rheephorm = progress.
I would say that the self-styled “education reformers” are shamelessly self-serving but that presupposes that they lack something, namely “shame”—
That they seem incapable, literally, of having. Or that, at the very least, they regard as without any value or merit.
Somebody tell me, please, how this is any different than the widely proclaimed successes of the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union.
And irrespective of what the fanboys and fangirls of Dr. Raj Chetty assert, Campbell’s Law—not Conjecture—makes its presence felt.
Just when you think they couldn’t go any lower…
😎
“Somebody tell me, please, how this is any different than the widely proclaimed successes of the Potemkin Villages of the now-vanished Soviet Union.”
Come on KTA, quit asking questions that are impossible to answer, you know, kind of like many standardized test questions.
People don’t realize that states make their own benchmarks. So if one state is doing better than another, it’s easy to rig the stats. However, the media should realize this. Instead the NY press backs Cuomo’s idiotic evaluation plan when not only are the tests flawed, but the state could easily change the benchmarks to match a political agenda.
You mean like the State of Texas dumbing down the tests so most would score proficient? My understanding is they have made progress in this area. Arkansas was told that their tests were a little too rigorous.
Makes perfect sense when money is the primary goal and not education.
I think this is progress. Now if they just nix all of the other test items, the problem is solved! And they can claim 100% success without torturing any students.
“Then-State Commissioner John King to assert that the state was making progress.”
The attempted cover up was the progress. It’s obvious that King thought they’d pulled it off.
Yes, it’s the same old song. Students and teachers are told they need to be held “accountable”, whatever that really means at this point. But who is holding the people at state ed. accountable? John B. King hit the road but the lunacy continues.
By the way, where is John B. King these days and what is he up to now?
Thanks to Fred Smith for doing the research that enabled this exposé. For once, the gaming style manipulation that has been going on (and not just since common core) for once it is being exposed at the pass and not as an “after the fact”. So true in my opinion that the manipulations were the result of wanting to show slight gains on these tests to PR spin the fallacy that slight gains were being made. This happened in the same way under Bloomberg “pre common core testing”!!! That was uncovered after the fact.
Thanks for letting this be uncovered before tests results are revealed!!! All this relentless focus on testing and data has to be exposed for what it is… those in power are manipulating whomever they want to game the system and force policy built on their manipulations/fallacies. None of this has anything to do with educating students and everything to do with the manipulator’s desire for control and profit!
They need to be exposed and their policy stopped before it has a chance to wreak its destructive path. This is a start. But the pessimist in me wonders where this snake will reappear again.. when one head is cut off, thousands more seem to return in its place.
Perhaps those deleted questions were related to the missing pages from the third grade test booklet D during last year’s assessment.
I’m glad they are discounting faulty questions and they should probably remove even more.
Ellen #RememberThatFaultyAlgebraRegentsFromYearsAgo