Mike Fair, a Republican legislator in South Carolina, worries about the cost and complexity of the new standards and tests.
When you read about the heavy spending that lies ahead, in a time when school budgets are being slashed and teachers laid off, you can see why the Common Core national standards/national tests movement is warmly endorsed by the technology industry.
This is an excerpt:
School districts will need enough computers to allow almost every student to take multiple annual exams. These computers must be suitable for the “innovative” test items and must be maintained and upgraded. Add to this the cost of increased IT staffing, and you begin to realize the problems of buying a Porsche test on a Ford budget.
A recent study projects that states will collectively spend $2.8 billion and $6.9 billion over seven years on technology alone for Common Core. And the authors cautioned that they were accepting the consortiums’ cost estimates at face value; analyst Ze’ev Wurman has predicted that South Carolina’s annual testing costs may skyrocket to $100 per student, compared with $12 per student today.
School districts that can’t afford substantial new technology will have to rotate students through the computer labs; Smarter Balanced recommends a 12-week testing window. But that creates significant security problems — how to keep the earlier-tested students from talking to the later-tested ones? — as well as inequity in results. The students tested late in the window will have almost three more months of instruction than those first out of the gate. Might this give an unfair advantage? And might teachers, whose evaluations depend on these test scores, resent having their students put at the front of the testing window?
These problems will have to be worked out, assuming the whole concept of nationalized standards, tests and curricula doesn’t collapse under its own weight. When that collapse or implosion happens, I hope it is before too much damage is done to our budgets, our schools and our children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And then there are those pesky problems of server capacity and available bandwidth. What happens to reliability when millions of test takers log on at the same time and systems fail under the strain? Who will be accountable for those of us “experiencing technical difficulties?”
In an effort to save time and money, im sure that the Common Core curriculum will devolve to just math and literacy soon.
Common Core has already been whittled down to math and literacy. They may have standards in other areas, but the test will only have a math and literacy skills component as far as I can tell. I looked at a few sample questions for the literacy skills section of the exam and they looked exactly the same as our state reading exam. Same garbage in a new package probably made by the same test vendors.
Yes, bandwidth is an issue. As my daughter took her first Common Core exam last year, the county network crashed in the middle of her American History test. The test was invalidated and other measures were quickly implemented to assess the students. It was a colossal waste of time. Not long after, my county approved a budget of 7 billion dollars (over three years) to purchase equipment solely for testing. That is a colossal waste of money… This is insanity and it must stop. (On a side note, just after approving that budget, my county was one of the first in Florida to sign on to the National Resolution Against High Stakes Testing. Not long after, the Fl School Board Association followed their lead.) People are catching on to the insanity of high stakes testing here in FL…
A high school in my area got so tired of the crashing computers that they ordered paper-pencil tests for the whole school one year.
At my school, the newly-required social studies tests for the end of the year are having to be scheduled TWO MONTHS before the end of the school year (and two days after spring break ends) because of lack of computer lab space. It’s crazy.
Do you teach in Florida? Our end of course exams begin in April when the school year ends in June. The last month of school is a zoo because students already took the “end of course” exam and our school district got rid of final exams in the name of “too much testing.”
Everyone needs to keep spreading the truth about the Common Core Standards: they are a vehicle for ever more testing and profiteering that follows from the testing regime.
Let’s give David (“nobody gives a s%#t what you think”) Coleman a taste of his own poison.
Michael, Michael, Michael … Your thoughts are exactly my thoughts.
Your last sentence is spot on!
Very interesting to have less extreme republicans taking an honest look at anticipated glitches down the road, but even then, note the sequence of concerns-
“When that collapse or implosion happens, I hope it is before too much damage is done to our budgets, our schools and our children”. – once again, kids come last- and budgets first.
At my school we have had to give the tests with paper and pencil, then the teachers and aids must enter the results one student at a time into the computer. One other problem that needs to be addressed, many elementary students do not know how to touch type for written response questions. I hope the revolution against this insanity reaches a fever pitch soon!
Of course he is correct. And as this computers come on line, they will surely have Microsoft products. Or, they will be Apples. Biggest shareholder….Bill Gates. Hey, what does profit have to do with it?
There is absolutely no validity in a test that has been spread out over a large window of time. Our state reading exam was administered on computers for the first time last year. Of course schools were not given additional computers so they stretched a 70 minute test over a week with different sets of students. The exact same test was given to all students. Students who tested on Monday could have easily shared which vocabulary was tested with the students who tested later in the week. These are the same test results that will be used for teacher value added rankings. An article was published in the Miami Herald about this situation but the state never responded to concerns that students who took the test at a later date had an advantage over students who took it first. They don’t care about accuracy, validity or whether or not these tests help improve student achievement. All they care about is having a set of numbers to use to punish teachers and schools.