Professor Jack Hassard of Georgia State University concludes, after reviewing Tom Loveless’s report for Brookings, that the Common Core Standards have had little or no effect on NAEP math scores, as Loveles predicted a few years ago.
The states most aligned with CCSS had the smallest gains.
Overall, eighth grade math scores show very little improvement since the Common Core was rolled out in 2010.
He writes:
Between 1990 – 2013 there was a 22 point increase in 8th grade math. Over the 23 years this amounts to about a 1 point increase per year. However, the average score increase from 2009 – 2013, the years the Common Core has been used, has only increased 0.30 points per year, much less than before the roll out of the Common Core.
Well, four years is too soon to see the radical improvements that Bill Gates and others have promised. Maybe we will have to wait a full decade to know whether the billions spent on CCSS were well spent.

I received the following e-mail from Sen. Brown (D-Ohio).
“Thank you for getting in touch with me about standardized testing requirements in schools. I appreciate you sharing your concerns about standardized tests not fully capturing a student’s academic abilities.
The NCLB accountability requirements placed a significant burden on our nation’s schools. Accountability is important and schools ought to be able to show that their students are learning, but a balance must be reached that provides for academic achievement without undermining the creative aspects of quality education or overburdening teachers and students. Teachers should be able to provide comprehensive subject lessons rather than focusing on standardized test materials.
During the reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary School Act, I will be sure to keep your views on this issue in mind. Thank you for being in touch with me.”
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Sound encouraging. Makes Chuck Schumer look like the love child of Duncan and Rhee.
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To say the CC math has been implemented for FOUR years is quite a stretch. Once a generation has been raised on CC math I would fully expect NEAP math scores to drop significantly.
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Senator Brown has always made it clear he’s on the right side of this issue. Schumer…not so much.
And the CC math has only been implemented in Connecticut this year. So we may have to wait even longer.
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Anyone want to help me send copies of “Tinkering Toward Utopia” to all the CCSS boosters? It seems to me that some people lack any actual basis for understanding how education has worked the past 120 years…
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Before that full decade has passed, the goal by the Fake Ed Reformers is to make sure there are no public schools left for kids to return to.
And the replacement—corporate run charter schools—will be so opaque there will be no way to judge them.
Instead, the private sector prison system will expand to deal with the Charter school to prison pipeline and profits will soar to even greater heights.
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Common Core math was implemented everywhere in 2010? Not quite. Here’s Washington’s plan for implementing Common Core math . . . by 2014-15. k12.wa.us/CoreStandards/pubdocs/Three-YearDomainImplementation.pdf
Oops.
OK, maybe other states were fully implementing it in 2010? Let’s try another state: California. Here’s that state’s plan for implementing Common Core: cde.ca.gov/re/cc/documents/ccsssysimpplanforcaapr13.pdf
Wait, that document wasn’t even released until April 2013, far too recently for there to be any impact on NAEP.
Oops again.
It’s hard to think of any research or analysis that could be quite as bogus as what Prof. Hassard has written. He apparently expects us to be so gullible that we condemn Common Core for not affecting math scores retroactively, years before Common Core was actually implemented anywhere.
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Well played WT.
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And, if Common Core proves to NOT be the solution promised…they won’t admit until it’s too late.
And the children will pay the price.
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The country will pay the price and that price may be some of the freedoms we take for granted.
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when – not “if”
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Timeline for CCSS is on Mercedes Schnieder’s website.
I have the CCSS being marketed in 2009 with sign ups from some states before they were published in 2010 around September. The PARCC and SMARTER consortiums were being patched together concurrently so that before December of 2010 they could apply for and split $300 million for test development.
In Jan-Feb 2011 the consortiums determined they could not construct tests without having curriculum materials, so the two consortiums asked for more money and got $15 million each for the missing part.
Let me know when you get to see the curriculum that is supposed to make the CCSS and tests work as a coherent whole. And stop accepting the lie that the CCSS have no federally funded curriculua. There is, and it is secret. It is secrete because security is a big issue as the test development takes place. In effect, Arne Duncan and his brilliant staff have bungled their way through the whole process of denying that the CCSS are a product of federal activity…all “state-lead,” all grassrootsy, and so on.
In case you need or want to see the legal needles being threaded by Arne Duncan et al, here are the two laws he has not respected and may have violated.
Legal Restriction: “U. S. Congress. General Provisions Concerning Education. (2010, February). Section 438 (20 U.S.C. § 1232a). US Code TITLE 20 EDUCATION CHAPTER 31, SUBCHAPTER III, Part 2, §§ 1232a. Prohibition against Federal control of education. No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.” Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/20/usc_sup_01_20.html
Legal Restriction: “The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, Pub. L. No. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 (2002). Section 9527 ESEA amended by NCLB (20 U.S.C. § 7907(a).]) This provision is based on 20 U.S.C. 7907(a) (Section 9527(a) of NCLB). Section 7907(a) is one of the ESEA’s general provisions contained in Title IX of the Act. It states: Nothing in this [Act] shall be construed to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s curriculum, program of instruction, or allocation of State or local resources, or mandate a State or any subdivision thereof to spend any funds or incur any costs not paid for under this [Act]. 20 U.S.C. 7907(a).”
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