Every state that has adopted Common Core tests has seen a sharp decline in test scores.
Maryland is the latest to discover that its scores fell thanks to Common Core tests.
“Reading and math scores on state tests for Maryland elementary and middle school students have dropped to their lowest levels in seven years, according to a Washington Post analysis of 2014 test data released Friday. Some Maryland officials expected the drop because schools are transitioning to new national academic standards that do not align with the tests.
“State and county educators said the across-the-board decline on the final Maryland School Assessment (MSA) was largely a result of the state’s move to a curriculum aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The new curriculum shifts some academic topics to different grade levels, especially in math, making the MSA obsolete.
“Students’ scores had been steadily inching up until 2013, when there were sharp declines in reading and math scores, a slide that continued this year. In 2014, overall proficiency scores in reading and math among elementary students fell 5.2 percentage points to 80 percent proficiency. Middle-schoolers fared worse — 71.4 percent proficiency, a drop of 6.5 percentage points. Drops in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties roughly mirrored the state averages.
“During the past two years, the state has shifted its instruction to prepare for the tests by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which are aligned with the Common Core and were recently field-tested in Maryland.”
The two federally-funded tests used NAEP “proficient” as their passing mark, a standard that is equivalent to high performance, not grade-level performance.
One reason–perhaps the main reason–that so many conservatives and entrepreneurs like the Common Core testing is that they hope it will convince suburban parents that their schools are no good and create new markets for charters, vouchers, and expensive new software. In other words, the Common Core tests are designed for failure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Though variously attributed to Benjamin Disreali:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
and used by Mark Twain:
“Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
(Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review)
An earlier version is from Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843–1911) and quoted in The Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, Monday, October 19, 1891. A similar report occurs in The Derby Mercury, Wednesday, October 21, 1891.
“Sir Charles Dilke was saying the other day that false statements might be arranged according to their degree under three heads, fibs, lies, and statistics.”
Regardless of who said it first or when, it is perhaps more true today that it was a century ago.
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Obviously if the current tests are testing a different curriculum than the previous tests then the results are not comparable.
Perhaps all college graduates shohld be required to pass a course on probability and statistics. Such a course would hopefully focus on conceptual issues and not drown in a morass of formulas.
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Good idea, &/or better yet at the high school level, & I’d add marketing to the list.
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Students using Common Core-aligned curricula are failing traditional tests. Students using traditional materials are failing the PARCC test. I thought math was math. According to Mr. Gates, multiplication in Alabama is the same as multiplication in California.
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Could you provide some data to support the claim that “students using Common Core-aligned curricula are failing traditional tests?”
Math may be “math” but “thinking, reasoning, and problem solving” are a different thing.
My colleagues and I have been reviewing some of the new test material and it is a different animal that what kids have been used to. Of course the scores are going to go down. If they didn’t, it would probably indicate that there was really no difference between the old tests and the new tests.
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The two federally-funded tests used NAEP “proficient” as their passing mark, a standard that is equivalent to high performance, not grade-level performance.
California has had this problem for years. Before NCLB, California came out with standards that were meant to ensure that a student who was Proficient would be ready for a 4 year college upon graduation – meaning that Advanced would be…. Ready for the Ivy League?
but how do we get the general public to see what is happening, instead of just blaming lazy teachers?
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Is there a Ready for Retirement test?
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No, but there’s a throw-experienced-teachers-in-a-ditch policy.
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In a better world, when implementing a new, different, better curriculum, one that requires deeper thinking and more engagement, scores would be expected to fall, particularly in moving from a lower-level test prep curriculum.
But in a better world, high stakes would not be attached to the scores. And the new curriculum would have been thoughtfully developed and implemented.
The scores dropping is not the issue. That this is not a better world is.
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Peter, you assume that the tests are valid, that they actually measure what they say they measure. You are too trusting.
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Ponderosa, please don’t try to make assumptions about what I’m thinking. I know tests and the problems.
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Peter,
Ah, but states aren’t implementing “a new, different, better curriculum”. They are implementing “standards”.
Huge difference!
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That’s my point, Duane. The movement of the scores is irrelevant. Of course, had then gone up, the cheerleaders would have praised the great standards.
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But then they could not claim that schools are failing due to lousy, lazy teachers and the sky is falling according to Chicken Little.
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“State and county educators said the across-the-board decline on the final Maryland School Assessment (MSA) was largely a result of the state’s move to a curriculum aligned with the Common Core State Standards. The new curriculum shifts some academic topics to different grade levels, especially in math, making the MSA obsolete.”
So they had the kids take the old test on material that wasn’t covered, while also transitioning to an entirely new system.
Is there some rational reason this was done other than to keep the insanely rigid “accountability” faction of the ed reform political coalition happy? It wasn’t enough that they’re giving them an entirely new system? They also had to give them the old test on material that wasn’t covered? What did the kids who had the misfortune to happen to be in a public school while this was transition was taking place do to deserve this shabby treatment? How do they benefit from this?
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Is there some rational reason this was done other than to keep the insanely rigid “accountability” faction of the ed reform political coalition happy?
No.
As the article states, “State Superintendent of Schools Lillian M. Lowery said. “However, school systems can use the MSA data to continue analyzing the achievement of specific student groups, classrooms and schools.””
“But state officials said they had to give the tests because they are required under federal law. They also said they believed that there was some value in examining results, especially on a local level, to try to identify achievement gaps within districts. If scores dropped at one school but not another, “that ought to cause educators to ask questions about why,” Jack Smith of MSDE said.”
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They’re remarkably cavalier with the time and energy of other people, aren’t they?
Is that one of the management skills they teach in the Broad Academy? Ridiculous busy-work given to appease a specific political faction within the ed reform “movement” should be off-loaded on teachers and students?
What was the point of the adults forcing them to take a test on material they hadn’t covered? So they can check the “accountability!” box?
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“If scores dropped at one school but not another, “that ought to cause educators to ask questions about why,” Jack Smith of MSDE said.”
Since using the results of any of these standardized tests is COMPLETELY INVALID and UNETHICAL as proven by Wilson the ensuing discussions are all just a bunch of mental masturbation. So little time so much mental masturbation-obligatory onanism is on the schedule today!
And echoing Chiara “They’re remarkably cavalier with the time and energy of other people, aren’t they?”
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I can explain the variation in test results without examining the DATA. No, it is not due to my innate brilliance. Some of the children in my district are from a higher SES than others. If I drive you around the city, I bet you can figure it out too.
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The “benefit of kids” is not a consideration here. This is a means of confirming that teachers are not effective, and sit back enjoying the protection of their monster unions.
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Please correct the headline.
The results refer to the Maryland School Assessment, which are the NCLB tests Maryland has been using for the past decade.
The tests were not rewritten to match the Common Core.
Now, the curriculum changed in Maryland as schools implemented the Common Core standards.
However, state officials, specifically Dr. Lois Lowery, a Broad BookClub Academy alumni, did not ask the USDOE for an exemption.
So, she had the kids take tests that didn’t necessarily match what they were taught this year.
Each school in Maryland did have one class take the PARCC field test. Fortunately, those students did not have to take the corresponding MSA subject test.
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Correction: Dr. Lillian Lowery.
My apologies, the children’s book author’s name first comes to mind when I hear Lowery.
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Berliner:Why Rising Test Scores May Not Mean Increased Learning: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/berliner-why-rising-test-score.html. Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties anchor the beltway. I don’t believe these suburban parents will be convinced their schools are falling. Instead, they will probably be looking at Washington for the failure of CC and PARCC on their students and districts.
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Sorry, that should read: I don’t believe these suburban parents will be convinced their schools are Failing!
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Nah, they don’t have to worry about their school “falling” down. That’s only the urban poverty schools that have to worry about that.
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It is ok. Most of the urban poverty schools already fell down.
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Yes, and if the Deformers have their way all the brick and mortar will come tumbling down and replaced with devices and individualized online instruction. There’s a lot of CA$H in that market.
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Please provide some clarity here: The last two years when test scores declined–the tests were not the common core tests (PARCC), they were the old Maryland tests? The state has not implemented the PARCC yet, only the common core standards? Correct? Why would one expect students being taught with one set of standards to perform well on an exam not aligned with those standards?
I have noticed people who report these scores and tests often combine the common core standards with common core tests, even though the cc tests are not yet in place. In Indiana, we have now partially adopted common core and partially, in some schools implemented common core, but we still use and are using the ISTEP+ exam, aligned to the old standards. Now we are adopting new, uncommonly high not common core standards that are nothing more than renamed common core standards, these will be implemented in schools this year, but the fed doe and the pence ed reformers want to use the old ISTEP+ to measure schools and teachers instead of waiting for a new test to be designed, tested, and implemented that is aligned with the new standards (obviously, we cannot use PARCC, since our standards are uncommonly high not common core, but just wait and watch as pence and his ed reformers adopt the PARCC).
The states that allow common core tests to be used without at least one full year of common core standards and instruction having taken place are just wasting money and trying to prove teachers are bad.
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“. . . one set of standards to perform well on an exam not aligned with those standards?
I’ve never implemented any standards in my classroom. Now I’ve utilized the CURRICULUM to aid in the teaching and learning process in my class but never standards.
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is your curriculum aligned to the standards? When we adopted our standards in Indiana way back last century, many schools left them unopened on the shelves. Those schools performed poorly on the ISTEP+ which was aligned to the standards. Those schools that developed and aligned curriculum and instruction to the standards did well on the exam, regardless of ses of students. Try to keep up with the discussion. Develop standards/goals, develop curriculum and instructional practice based on those standards, develop/implement/evaluate/validate an exam based on the standards, then use the results of the exam to see where students are having difficulty. Hard to do with a once a year test, but gives an overall big picture of how well a school and the staff of that school are doing to implement the standards and preparing students to meet the goals of the education system. The exam is not a measure of teacher quality as too many other factors play much larger roles in determining student learning. But schools that do not do well on the exams usually are not implementing the standards. Thus they are not meeting the expectations set by the state, goals which should be aligned with higher ed and workplace skills.
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No, they are not aligned with any standards. Have you ever read the “standards” for foreign languages? They make very little sense.
A couple of years back I was supposed to “align” the Spanish curriculum with those standards. I couldn’t do it because they were so convoluted. This past time with a new Asst. Supe I was told to write a curriculum that could be used and was a reflection of what can be done in a given year. Now that was doable.
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“But schools that do not do well on the exams usually are not implementing the standards. Thus they are not meeting the expectations set by the state, goals which should be aligned with higher ed and workplace skills.”
Any proof for that first sentence?
Last sentence-pure edudeformer talk.
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multiple intervies and school visits with curriculum people and school leaders during the late 90’s and early nclb years in Indiana. We documented lack of implementation of the standards into curriculum and instruction with low test scores. Once the schools started opening the standards, participating in the professional development offered so that teachers could understand how to incorporate standards into their curriculum and instructional practices, and once the teachers had a chance to do so, the test scores went up. No, I am not an ed reformer, thank you, and sorry for your students that you never understood how to develop curriculum based on the standards–and yes, those standards for foreign languages could have been better.
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“. . . and once the teachers had a chance to do so, the test scores went up.”
And that’s the problem right there, using standardized tests scores as an indicator of anything remotely related to student learning (note I didn’t say student achievement). Using such scores is a complete bastardization of the teaching and learning process.
And yes, I realize many folk hold the mistaken belief/opinion that those scores are valid but they are not and any conclusions drawn are as Wilson says “vain and illusory.”
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wow! so how do you evaluate your students? do you give tests? Why, as you think test scores are unrelated to achievement and learning? Let’s just all have a good time, watch some movies with foreign language usage in them, and call it a day. I am not here to defend testing or talk about how to develop such tests. Again, did you ever get any real professional development or instruction on how to incorporate standards into your instruction methods and curriculum? And repeating the testing never identifies student learning diatribe gets as old as the ed reformers shiling for tfa, vouchers, charters and choice and their soaring test scores.
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I assess/evaluate on a day to day, hour to hour, minute by minute basis. I do give one vocab quiz (written) and one test (written and listening, giving points for speaking is a complete waste of time) per Lesson that the combined points count for about 20-25% of their grade (since I have to play that particular abhorrent game to continue teaching-and I let the students know that those grades are, to be acceptable classroom talk in the rural school in which I teach, total excrement of bovine origin, and yes that is the term I use).
“. . . did you ever get any real professional development . . .”
Don’t need to be professionally developed to “incorporate standards into [my] instruction[al] methods and curriculum” as standards as an educational practice are illogical and invalid. Why would I want to incorporate illogical and invalid practices into the teaching and learning process in my class? That would be educational malpractice and I should have my license pulled were I to incorporate such invalidities and insanities into my practice.
“. . . repeating the testing never identifies student learning diatribe gets as old. . . ”
First please point me to where I’ve said “testing never identifies student learning”. If I have I’ve forgotten (which wouldn’t necessarily be unusual for me as I don’t keep track of every single thought or word that comes out of my head). If it gets so old, ignore me. That’s pretty easy to do, eh!!
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I think pretty much everyone has lost control of the word “standards” . Like other words in the reform debates, it’s become meaningless. Or rather “standards” means anything you want it to.
I avoid the word, so like Duane, I’ve never implemented standards. But in teaching AP Calculus and AP Stats, I have taught based on the content in the AP course outlines and often referred to released exams. It’s a challenging, well-defined, meaningful content with a well-designed exam.
So it’s not CCSS.
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Do you have a curriculum? Lucky you! We just have standards.
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I even got to write my own curriculum. That’s how it works in smaller rural poverty districts, which is fine with me.
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In “cutting edge” New York, the much-maligned ELA modules have “quick writes” and performance assessments that use the language of the standards, which in turn, is the language of the questions on the CCSS ELA tests 3-8 and CCSS regents exam (grade 11). A state official at last week’s state training opined that he thought these modules could replace the AP English literature course. We certainly are living in interesting times when rogue groups are challenging David Coleman’s College Board. Who is writing the “materials” for Maryland’s assessments? Expeditionary Learning? Public Consulting Group? Core Knowledge? They are all “but young in deed.”
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I’d also like to inject a little political reality into this rigged “debate”, if I may.
I live in a state that is governed by lawmakers who are openly hostile to public schools and advocate replacing public education with “backpack vouchers”, a completely privatized system. That’s true of a lot of people.
The moment the CC test scores come out, there will be a rush to the microphones by Governor Kasich and the Republicans in the state legislature to denigrate and undermine our public schools and they’ll point to Arne Duncan’s tests to do it. By then of course Mr. Duncan and the rest of the DC engineers of this will be down the road and off to lucrative ed reform jobs in the private sector, but we’ll all still be here.
Thanks for that, DC! Good job!
“Innovative” doesn’t mean “reckless and stupid” and it also doesn’t mean “blithely ignore the reality of what’s happening at the state level”.
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Our Democrat governor and legislature in RTTT state Delaware have been actively selling out public education for at least a decade. They eagerly pour dollars into charter schools while regular public schools, especially in the northern part of the state, are economically starved.
Sadly, our own union has been a willing partner in this, persistent in its support of only Democrat candidates, and “playing nice” with those in power.
It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a power and class issue. State lawmakers know who it is that votes in local and state elections, and that is who they aim to please.
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I get that, and agree to a certain extent, but in my opinion this is a “national movement” that completely ignores what is happening in states that are led by people who make no bones about ending public education. That’s the goal. It’s not like they hide it.
Ed reformers comparing what is happening in MI and OH and PA and FL to Massachusetts or Maryland or Connecticut is not a valid comparison.
All I read about are DC and NYC and Boston charters. That situation is NOT representative of the ed reform “movement” in the midwest. Well-intentioned people within the national ed reform “movement” are doing a lot of damage to existing public schools in these states. They have to deal with the reality of how national reforms are translated at the state level. They’ve been used almost exclusively to gut and undermine existing public schools in MI, OH and PA. That’s the reality. Whatever the lofty intentions were, that’s the result for public schools.
They sold this as “improving public schools”. That means ALL public schools, not the prestige charters in northeastern states.
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Yeah Gates & Co. If you “guys” really believe that suburban towns will go charter, you are insane! I will in an upper-middle class suburban town in Massachusetts, in which parents are heavily invested in schools. I remember that the Supt. of Schools wanted to change report cards from a A,B, etc. scale to a standards based system and the parents went nuts; just short of pitch forks and torches, because they wanted to make sure that colleges understood the grading system. If it was ever proposed that in my town charters would take over, there would be some old school lynchings in the town common.
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I live in a suburb of NYC and a local public high school that has been around for decades in a very old prestigious town is turning into a “STEM” charter school as we speak. Do not be so sure it will not come to your door.
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However it may play out, that is the plan, as indiscreetly revealed by so-called reformer Rick Hess in a November, 2012 Ed Week blog post entitled “The Common Core Kool-Aid.”
In this post, which everyone opposing CC and so-called education reform should read, Hess, to his credit, writes about the faith-in Mammon-based motives and strategies behind Common Core:
“… When I ask how exactly Common Core is going to change teaching and learning, I’m mostly told that it’s going to shine a harsh light on the quality of suburban schools, shocking those families and voters into action. This will apparently entail three steps:
First, politicians will actually embrace the Common Core assessments and them use them to set cut scores that suggest huge numbers of suburban schools are failing (precisely what NYSED head and charter hack John King did:MF). Then, parents and community members who previously liked their schools are going to believe the assessments instead of their lying eyes… Finally, newly convinced their schools stink, parents and voters will embrace reform.”
Urban school districts were the initial beachhead for the hostile takeover of public education, and have been under the control of the edu-privateers for more than a decade, and many urban districts have been destroyed or are on the verge of destruction: Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, DC, etc., so in those places Common Core is just a tool for picking the carcass clean and gorging yourself with fees and profits while doing so. Rural districts are a literal and figurative outlier so far, and that’s not where the big money is, though their time will also come.
No, as Hess’ blog post implies (though he seemed skeptical of its likely success), the pivotal location for the final triumph of the edu-privateers is suburban districts with affluent parents. If they can be turned against their local public schools, then it’s game over.
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Okay.. so I will state what seems obvious to me… let’s stop spending all of our time on maniacally focusing on data and testing so that teachers can actually teach! When teaching is all about the test .. you get what you get… learning to answer questions which are only as good as the questions being asked. You do not get actual thinking about subject matter. You get fear in the classroom – fear of not passing the tests. Students do not feel safe… they feel anxious. Teachers feel anxious too because somehow these tests are also supposed to measure their ability “to teach”. How many times do teachers have to yell, scream, complain and bang our heads and our students’ heads metaphorically against the wall to make this understood – that this is not a productive learning environment. A child who trusts a teacher and feels safe in the classroom environment is one who is likely to be engaged and ready to learn (and our nation’s poorest students desperately need to feel safe in the classroom and free from punishment and anxiety producing race-like competition to “do better”). Teachers should not fear for their careers over the results of tests they neither create nor are created by educators. Return teaching to teachers. Let principals use their own eyes to see what is going on. They are capable. The directives are not coming from school districts but school districts are forced to comply. The buck should stop at Arne Duncan. This nightmare begun by Bush and put on steroids by Obama under Duncan needs to stop. Title one children have enough to contend with in their lives and deserve SO MUCH BETTER. All that money wasted on tests, test prep materials, coverages for tests, special positions just for testing, computers just for testing, space for all the testing, expensive and not productive workshops to ensure compliance with testing needs to stop. Doesn’t get much clearer than that to me. We should all be highly suspect of those still trying to shove useless and detrimental reforms down a nation’s throats despite the overwhelming evidence.
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That’s quite AGrO!
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Diane, I’m a teacher in Baltimore City and want to point out that the Common Core tests were not given in Maryland this past Spring. The PARCC was piloted with a small number of students, and the PARCC will be given to all students in Spring 2015, but the test scores discussed in the Baltimore Sun editorial you referenced were from the old test, the MSA (Maryland State Assessment). The editorial made the point that MSA scores may have been lower this year (Spring 2014) because the curriculum had shifted to Common Core although the test was the old non-Common Core test, the MSA. I know you care about getting facts right, so I thought I should comment.
Adreon Hubbard
Baltimore, MD
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Adreon Hubbard: I accept your clarification unless challenged by others with solid info.
Psychometrics for the Psychometrically Challenged:
1), Content validity: does the test truly measure what it claims to measure?
2), Predictive or criterion validity: how well can the test be used to predict some other event at another time? [e.g., can high or low SAT scores tell us anything accurate and trustworthy about college first-year GPAs]
3), Curriculum validity: was the material tested actually in the curriculum?
4), Instructional validity: was the material tested actually taught?
(See Gerald Bracey, READING EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: HOW TO AVOID GETTING STATISTICALLY SNOOKERED, 2006, pp. 145-146)
Unless someone has significant new information or can approach this in a novel and unexpected way, how can the events described in the posting be described as anything but a sucker punch to school staff, students and parents?
The last sentence of the posting: “In other words, the Common Core tests are designed for failure.”
From an article by Alfie Kohn, ten years ago, already cited on this blog: “For the officials in charge, the enterprise of standardized testing is reminiscent of shooting an arrow into a wall and then drawing the target around it.” [MANY CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND, 2004, p. 82]
This is shameful and immoral. CCSS has got to go.
😎
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The “backpack voucher” is going to be achieved through the re-authorization of ESEA. H.R.5. That is what we should be discussing, exposing and calling our reps about. That is what will end public education as we know it. Once we decouple neighborhood tax base funding for schools and allow students to take that money with them across town, out of county, out of state, now we have just “regionalized” our nation and eliminated representative government and the power of local school boards. That is one of the major goals of this reform. Have you also noticed your local planning boards are now being subsumed by a Central New York Regional Planning Board? This is a U.N. initiative to end “home rule” and eliminate representative government. If our elected officials no longer have any say in anything but just implement what is coming down from these unelected “regional” boards, how sovereign are we?
Nobody wants to talk about Agenda 21 or Smart Growth or Sustainable America or the Green machine that is trampling on our sovereignty. Ignore it at your own peril. It is the engine that is driving the implementation of the CC and the charter movement that will destroy our country.
Its the new ESEA and IDEA regulations that will be our downfall. Get informed. Don’t be distracted by the CC debate. It is like a magician on stage. Look over here while I am doing my real work over there. http://educationvotes.nea.org/2013/07/19/house-of-representatives-narrowly-passes-flawed-esea-reauthorization/
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I agree, and if past performance is any indication, Democrats in Congress will go along because they all promote charters and they will get absolutely no concessions from Republicans on public schools in return.
Both parties rubber-stamped the charter school funding bill in the House and Democrats got nothing, zero, zip, for public schools in return for passing a huge expansion of charter schools. 100% charter schools, 0% public schools.
They’re either the worst advocates in the world for public schools or they are on-board for privatization. I would like to know why the people I hire to advocate for public schools have stopped doing that. I think we deserve an explanation from lawmakers.
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Standard material, or minimum standard for passing? How is the word standard defined in common core state standards?
Standard defined body of knowledge to aspire to, where the cut score and test difficulty could be set anywhere.
Or,
Minimum standard for proficiency in basic skills, where the more difficult material is not part of the core, but optional or elective for those who have mastered the basics.
Are the basics, the minimum standard, the rigor? Wouldn’t the rigor be above and beyond the basic standard?
CCSS aka MCLB (more children left behind) Nice work bozos.
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Where “cut” scores are located does not leave any students behind (unless there is an actual impact on the student from the exam score). The students have the same knowledge and ability to do academic tasks independently of any cut score, exam taken, or even teacher awarded grade.
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Is your point TE that arbitrarily determined cuts in and of themselves have no consequences? Consequences are meted out independently of where the cuts are designated. So according to your theory, when New York State set the cuts last year, which resulted in approximately 70% of children failing, there were no consequences. How do you quantify consequences?
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They might have consequences and they might not, depending on the jurisdiction. In my state, high school graduation depends on earning a sufficient number of Carnage units of the right type. What cut scores don’t do is determine how much a student actually knows and is able to do.
My adult foster son (a high school graduate) has a number of learning disabilities and has a great deal of trouble even arithmetic. Changing the cut score in any exam would not change his ability to add fractions.
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Maybe I am going soft due to summer vacation, but you have finally made a point that changed my thinking on this issue. There is hope for you TE!
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No consequences? This Blog reported research that found students only stressed more, facing the loss of a parent or blindness than when faced with being kept back a grade.
A child who spends the summer in tutoring sessions (tax dollars for private business) because of machinations by tech moguls, feels differently about school and learning.
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Linda,
You might want to read my posts again. As I said, 1) young students can be made to care very deeply about these exam scores even if the exams have no impact on the students while older students understand these are no stakes exams and 2) in states like mine, standardized exams have no consequences for students. In other states, like New York for example, standardized test results might prevent a student from graduating from high school.
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Test scores will definitely go down on the PARCC with Common Core. The Common Core curriculum for my students is so much harder. Honestly, I have no clue how I will get the concepts successfully taught to my students. Some of the concepts I will be teaching to my 12 year olds – I never learned myself in my Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees….but the Common Core thinks it is important for a 12 year old to master these hard concepts. It is all so silly. The sad thing is that this will cause so much suffering for our children and teachers. Test scores will go into the toilet. The crooked politicians will be there ready to rescue students and parents with their “better” schools. It is all a part of their big plan. Thank goodness we have Diane’s blog . . .to let others know what is really going on here. Twilight Zone.
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Sad Teacher, you make the best argument for how any sane system would have implemented CCSS. One grade at a time, moving up. For your 12 year olds,this is probably at most the second year of CCSS?
Just that they are different argues for that.
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Diane, I have always admired your attention to accuracy. I commented recently that Maryland did not administer the new Common Core aligned test (PARCC) in Spring 2014. Rather, it only field tested it with selected students, and the scores did not count. The old test, the MSA (Maryland State Assessment) was administered, and those scores did go down. See http://www.msde.maryland.gov/press/07_11_2014_a.html. The title of your post “Maryland Test Scores Plummet as new Common Core Tests are Adopted” is simply wrong. Perhaps you could retitle it “Maryland Test Scores Decrease as new Common Core Curriculum is Implemented.” You responded to my comment that you accept my correction, but I am puzzled that you have not reposted the correction. I’m a teacher in Baltimore City and this error is very glaring for me, especially as readers continue to comment on the original post. We have to be accurate to be effective. I know you are busy. Thank you for reading this and for all your hard work on behalf of public schools.
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perhaps the 21st century, college and career ready skills touted by the common corists were not in place when she went to school 🙂 This is the internets, once something is posted it is very hard to make it go away. Thank you for your information though and you are correct, the title is very misleading. Anti ed reformers need to tighten up their language, be more precise, accurate, and less jargony. We can leave that to the ed reformers.
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