Kevin Glynn, who blogs as Lace to the Top, teaches elementary school. In this post, he describes the extraordinary demands of the third grade Common Core in Néw York.
“Can your 8 year old read 300 words per minute? Mine can’t. In fact, I don’t know anyone who can. Yet, that is exactly what Common Core state tests require.
“In looking through samples of Common Core state tests on engageNY for third graders, I find myself once again puzzled by what they are asking our children to do.
“The typical Common Core passage is 600 words in length. During the first day, (of a 3 day test) students are required to read a minimum of 5 passages and answer 30 questions. Students have 70 minutes to complete day one of the test.
“If a student spends only 1 minute reading and analyzing each of the 30 questions, they will have to read passages that are 2-3 years above grade level at a pace of 75 words per minute. Some would argue that is not too difficult a task and at first glance, I might agree.”
He then demonstrates the absurd expectations that guarantee most children will fail.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think the point is to FAIL kids, then…PRIVATIZE public education for the wealthy. Barbaric!
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That is the main reason WHY I submitted a letter of REFUSAL to my child’s principal! These tests are developmentally inappropriate and not a true measure! Refuse the test!
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Test taking advice from EngageNY:
“Many of the questions on the 2015 Grade 3 Common Core English Language Arts Test are more advanced and complex than those found on assessments that measured prior grade-level standards. Answer choices will not jump out; rather, students will need to make hard choices between “fully correct” and “plausible but incorrect” answers that are designed specifically to determine whether students have comprehended the entire passage and are proficient with the deep analyses specified by the standards.”
No, they are designed specifically to produce a super-failure rate of 95% in our special needs, learning disabled, and ELL populations; a near 90% super-failure rate in our black and Hispanic populations; and an overall 60% to 70% super-failure rate among our 8 to 14 year old children. Fear not NY parents, NYSED has come to their senses for your HS kids as cut scores for 9th grade algebra I and 11th grade ELA will be set at the traditional 75% passing rates despite the increases in difficulty. Super-failure for our youngest students and a big fat cut score benie for the big kids.
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It is so clear that the fools who write this nonsense have not spent more than a few minutes with any typical 8 or 9 year old children. If they had they would see how foolish and idiotic that statement sounds. I’m guessing it was written by some former TFA Ivy League grad or perhaps an economist or pyschologist, with no real world experience of actual children.
Shameful and disgusting. And criminal when it comes to ESE and ELL children. These people need to be shamed and ridiculed in the public square and never let near an actual child. Ever.
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Teachers need to STRIKE
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This!
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Kevin Glynn is on point.
The 2014 Grade 3 ELA had 30 multiple-choice items following 5 passages. One passage and six items were being field tested. The field test material was being tried out for future use by the publisher, Pearson. As such, it didn’t count in the score students got–but it did count for taking up their time, concentration and energy and adding up to frustration. The six field test items (#19 through #24), came before the final passage, which was followed by six M-C items. These items about maple sugar counted.
The 3rd grade test was so badly designed and developed that the NYS Education Department (SED) secretly dropped the last two items (#29 and #30) from the test–rendering it a 22-item test. The reason the items were yanked was due to the high perecntage of students who omitted the items (i.e., left them blank). They were pulled covertly because to have admitted the problem would have opened SED and Pearson up to questions about their testing program–the defective engine that’s driving education statewide.
Students, teachers and principals are being judged upon this crooked scale. The only answer is for each group of victims (yes, that means teachers and principals) to opt out of giving and taking the 2015 exams coming on April 14th.
Someone’s head needs to roll in Albany’s dirty SED.
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I agree that these tests are a total fraud. The directions are filled with contradictions– make a best guess, but do close reading of each passage more than once.
The bootlegging of “field test” items into the testing schedule, and not counting the scores, is the same as asking the kids and teachers to subsidize the test makers.
This is a perfectly routine abuse of the idea of “cost-effective” testing–testing on the cheap–at the expense of the time and energy and the quite legitimate test anxiety of kids and teachers.
This fraud is common place and permitted by officials in state departments of education.
It is also one of a many reasons why test scores totally misrepresent the actual achievement of students and their teachers.
For a time. Florida published information on the percentage of items on each test that were present only for field testing. Those were mostly fill-in-the-bubble tests–but up to 10% might be in the hopper for field tests.
The PARCC and SBAC tests in ELA are “burdened” with another cost: Permissions and fees to use excerpts from copyright-protected works–meaning almost everything. This may explain why some very arcane historical content is favored for “close reading.”
The testing industry depends on having a deep reservoir of field tested items that can be recycled for tests and/or tweaked and field-tested again.
I suppose the test-makers for ELA will “partner” with some speed-reading contractors for a bundle of test prep and professional development modules rather than go back to the drawing board.
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What? Am I to believe that the cock-eyed notion that all students would be reading on grade level by this year has not been fulfilled?? But, it must have – it is NCLB!
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Do you think that getting away from the Common Core Standards and more into innovations such as STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is a good idea?
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I can’t speak for Diane, but I am SICK to death of “STEM,” as if those subjects are the only ones that are important. As a teacher of social studies, I take my job to prepare futures voters and government leaders seriously, and STEM never takes into account social studies, or art, or music, or physical education. And English is only an afterthought in STEM. In my state, STEM teachers get a yearly bonus of several thousand dollars if they teach certain subjects. No other teachers get those bonuses.
Jefferson and others argued that one of the main purposes of public education is to produce an informed citizenry. STEM, it the form politicians generally endorse, completely ignores that purpose.
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I love the media endorsements of Common Core testing. This is a very fair and balanced take, don’t you think?
“It is disappointing that some opponents of accountability in public education continue to do damage in Rhode Island. While the first week of PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers) testing generally went well in most Rhode Island cities and towns, large numbers of students refused to participate. That will probably do those students and their towns little good.”
Anyone who questions whether their kid should sit for this experimental test is now an “opponent of accountability in public education” Good God.
Is this the “debate” and “rigorous analysis” we were promised? Anyone who doesn’t unreservedly cheerlead the Common Core tests is labeled and then dismissed?
http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20150325/OPINION/150329589
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This is the new mantra of edu-fakers everywhere. Think about all of the snake oil promises we rarely hear about anymore. They are hanging to the accountability meme for dear life. All their eggs are in this basket. Unfortunately it seems to be holding water for a lot of outsiders. We desperately need a talking point that refutes the specious claim that a single, very dubious test score can measure the quality of a child’s education or the quality of a teacher’s instructional program.
This is the best I’ve seen but it exceeds the maximum talking point length by a factor of four:
“What was educationally significant and hard to measure
has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure.
So now we measure how well we taught what isn’t worth learning.”
– Arthur Costa, Emeritus Professor at California State University
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AGAIN–shut down Pear$on! Yet another Sunday newspaper ad (much bigger, though not in color this time), costing them–er, I mean, we, the taxpayers– probably about $5K.
They still need test scorers at one of their ILL-Annoy locations–I find this amusing at this later date–what, they couldn’t get anyone at their “Job Fair” last weekend (or on Craig’s List, where they often advertise?) Copy–(at the top):
“ALWAYS LEARNING” (then, very large letters) “PEARSON”
Picture of boy w/toy airplane–&–kinda funny!–This time, at the bottom of the picture, but w/in the picture, it says “Scorers” in big letters again, capital S.
It looks as if they are advertising for children to be scorers!
For more on this, read Ken Previti’s blog, Reclaim Reform–either the 3/25 or 3/27 entry–the rest of the copy (always the same, sorry drivel) can be found there, along w/Ken’s always accurate, sarcastic comments (& those of his readers!)
“PEARSON…Uniting talent with Opportunity.”
BTW–those of you who live in the area (or others where there may be test scoring) should sign on, if you’re able. You can write an update on Todd Farley’s 2009 expose, Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.
And you can donate the money to some cash-starved public school near you (or to any charity–esp. in Ill-Annoy, w/all the drastic cuts being made in social services, you have a wide variety of choices).
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CBT McGraw-Hill says “TerraNova Common Core is the only field-tested, valid, and authentic measure of theCommon Core available to districts today.
Can anyone tell me if this is accurate?
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It is a house of cards. Common Core is not developmentally appropriate. It narrows the curriculum. How can any tests based on Common Core be valid and reliable? What are they measuring?
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Cruel unadulterated unethical nonsense and malpractice!
Why stop there?
WHY not FORCE 3rd graders to translate War and Peace into Manderine Chinese?
Opportunities of making children and parents feel like failure are endless with Gates’ Gargantuan Game & Harmful Hoaks on the World.
What will history books write about the Gates Era?
Will we refer to it as BGE or AGE? I am sure he will name it himself.
What he & his Bottomfeeders get away with is disgusting.
Why we don’t all revolt, is a puzzle to me.
People in the US get outraged, march, protest and make a difference.
Harming our children is watched from a distance, a private painful battle of survival for teachers, children and their parents.
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Curious, I Google the average word count for one minute of reading and came up with 130 words per minute from this site.
http://www.speechinminutes.com/
Here’s another one from
If top readers read at speeds of above 1000 words per minute (wpm) with near 85% comprehension, they only represent 1% of readers. Average readers are the majority and only reach around 200 wpm with a typical comprehension of 60%.
Unfortunately, this is far from the real situation. The average reader is five times slower than the good reader. Things are even worse if we consider reading efficiency as well as speed. Reading efficiency is reading speed weighted by comprehension rate and it amounts to 200 x 60% or 120 efficient words per minute (ewpm) for the average reader and to 1000 x 85% or 850 ewpm for top readers. Thus, an efficiency ratio of seven divides these two categories.
http://readingsoft.com/
What the results of this search confirmed for me is that the reading speed for the Common Core Tests is another planned factor in programmed failure at every level designed to fail as many children as possible leading to many teachers labeled as failures causing public schools to be closed and those children turned over to the corporate Charters.
I’m convinced that the same thing happened in the last international PISA test where the U.S. tested more children living in poverty than exists in the ratio for the country. The U.S. already had more children living in poverty than any of the other OECD countries tested but by testing an even higher ration, that deliberately skewed the average to be lower.
Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds:
As a result of the new information, the U.S. rankings on the 2009 PISA test in reading and math would rise, respectively, to sixth from 14th and to 13th from 25th after controlling for social class differences and a sampling error by PISA and after eliminating between-country differences that are statistically too small to meaningfully affect a country’s ranking.
The change follows the authors’ revising a figure they used in calculating the sampling error: At the time the test was applied, 32 percent (not 23 percent) of U.S. students eligible for the free lunch program were in schools where more than half of the students qualify for this benefit.
Ihttp://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
It is obvious to me that Arne Duncan used his clout at the DOE to manipulate who took the test to skew the results downward, because even the corporate education reformers must have known what Stanford reported before the PISA was given.
The Stanford report also found:
There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.
In conclusion, everything the neo-liberal, Milton Friedman worshiping, corporate education reformers are doing is designed to destroy the democratic public education system that I think is the foundation of democracy in the United States.
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AND… correct me if I’m mistaken? Judging from the sample PARCC ELA questions online, you can’t even get the whole passage and the questions on one screen. The samples I tried had passages in a little window you had to scroll to read, with questions requiring separate negotiation. I expect it would take weekly practice for months for 8- to 10-yo’s to master just reading the passage and answering the questions in order– let alone reading the passage a couple of times, & trying to negotiate back to the pertinent part of the passage from a particular question.
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In most schools, keyboarding is no longer taught, just expected, because access to computers is limited and only reserved for testing.
We don’t know if we are testing academic skills, lack of tech skills or both.
The ReformBullies could care less. The harder it is for children, the more of a cruel rush these bullies experience.
Sick! Sick!
Why are we tolerating this? It makes no sense at all.
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I would like to know if the SBAC test does the same thing on their third grade testing? I would imagine it is the same, since we are going to compare all CCSS results, but I am wondering how we do that when not all states are using the PARCC test?
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Having seen the sample tests and in so far as my school will be taking the SBAC test during the coming months I can tell you the SBAC is similar with a more confusing interface requiring the navigation of multiple split screens simultaneously.
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Diane…CCSS say students should read 300 words per minute?
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Diane…CCSS say students have to read 300 words per minute or NY state tests ask that? Those are two different entities.
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Can you figure out how to separate the CCSS from the tests? Many parents would be thrilled.
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Oh…and btw…Common Core State Standards are a set of statements about what students should be able to do. There are no “common core” passages. People need to stop confusing CCSS with poorly designed tests that are intended to measure the standards. They are two very different things..
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Thomas,
Poorly designed standards and poorly designed tests are parts of the same package.
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Tom
People need to stop confusing the Common Core standards as a stand-alone offer from the USDOE. The NCLB waiver was a package deal that mandated states adopt/implement ALL of the following:
Common Core standards
+ companion tests (PARCC and SBAC)
+ use of CC test scores to evaluate teachers and schools
+ a test score data harvesting system
+ charter cap expansions.
Here are the GRADE 3 CC standards for reading informational text:
1.
Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
2.
Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea.
3.
Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
4.
Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 3 topic or subject area.
5.
Use text features and search tools (e.g., key words, sidebars, hyperlinks) to locate information relevant to a given topic efficiently.
6.
Distinguish their own point of view from that of the author of a text.
7.
Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).
8.
Describe the logical connection between particular sentences and paragraphs in a text (e.g., comparison, cause/effect, first/second/third in a sequence).
9.
Compare and contrast the most important points and key details presented in two texts on the same topic.
10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
THE COMMON CORE ANCHOR STANDARDS
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.1
Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.
Note on range and content of student reading
To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts. Through extensive reading of stories, dramas, poems, and myths from diverse cultures and different time periods, students gain literary and cultural knowledge as well as familiarity with various text structures and elements. By reading texts in history/social studies, science, and other disciplines, students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas. Students can only gain this foundation when the curriculum is intentionally and coherently structured to develop rich content knowledge within and across grades. Students also acquire the habits of reading independently and closely, which are essential to their future success.
So TOM,
The main selling points of Common Core was increased rigor, deeper meaning, higher order/critical thinking skills, and college and career readiness. The Pearson writers were tasked with developing test items that aligned with these ambitious goals.
The difficulty of the passages and the required reading rates (300 words/min?) were obviously selected by Pearson test developers to set the bar as high as advertised.
If you like the Common Core standards – you should like the tests because they deliver exactly what the CC founders have promised.
If you don’t like the CC standards, good luck because they are Cast in Concrete with absolutely no mechanism for revision/improvement. The founders have gambled the futures of 50 million children that they got it just right on the first try – and with virtually no input from the teachers tasked with implementation. Cheers!
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As a parent who has opted out my daughter since 3rd grade, I’d call this nothing short of child abuse.
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Thomas, those pushing the Common Core such as Mike Petrelli have noted that without the tests to compare schools across the nation, the core is meaningless. This is all about privatizing after declaring failure. The test is what will be used to rate schools and fire teachers. The two are siamese twins joined at the head.
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The only question I have is if these standards were tested before they were implemented? Was there research done where the policymakers of the Common Core could conclude that a third grader could really read that many words per minute? I do not really understand how a test at that level can really determine the readiness of a child to move onto the next grade. Also, with the opt out movement does any of this testing really matter in the first place? If parents and students can opt out of the testing doesn’t that make the test scores more obsolete?
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No, this is a wholly faith-based policy. No research backs any of it. Policy makers just believe without proof.
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No, the CC standards were not pre-tested or piloted. The founders decided to use 50 million children as guinea pigs in this educational policy experiment. They were in too much of a rush as the standards were needed as one of the main pieces in the federal NCLB waiver deal. No time for piloting as the 2014 NCLB deadline for 100% proficiency was upon every Title 1 school district in the country. Not only did they rush an un-tested set of standards into place, they did so without any input from teachers or child development specialists, And in their final act of arrogance, David Coleman and Co. decided to exclude any mechanism for revision/improvements in the standards.
They are truly CC standards, i.e. “Cast in Concrete”
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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When I was in 5th grade n the 1970’s, our English teacher told she was going to measure how fast we could read for some assessment. The text was going to be projected on the wall and we had to read it aloud. Luckily, we never had to do it.
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It would definitely appear that these tests, if normed to be 2 grade levels or more above a child’s actual grade level, are rigged to have a high failure rate. Either this or an extreme arrogance and ignorance that most children (99% ) do not have IQs above 130 which would be what is needed to adequately pass these tests. This is child abuse and will have dire consequences on the self-efficacy of children in the ericksonian stage of competence. Will this create a learned helplessness in this generation? Will this lead to increases in mental health problems? Will this increase bully behavior and victimization due to lower self esteem? (How insane to simultaneously create anti bullying programming when the system creates an environment ripe for bullying behavior.) See: http://Www.vcbconsulting.com/gtworld/iqgrade.html
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300wpm is the level set for adult non-native English speaker who is highly competent in reading and language literacy. Equivalent to those who take the GRE as part of application requirement for graduate school. It well explains how idiotic and unrealistic to make this kind of tall order to elementary school students.
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The example says that students are required to read at 75wpm (assuming one full minute per question, which is itself unlikely). The average 2nd grader reads at 72wpm, so…okay. What’s the problem?
The linked article says that if students spend two minutes per question (seriously?), then students would have to be able to read at 300wpm. Well, sure. And if students spent 10 seconds per question, then they would have to read at 46 wpm. If you start pulling random numbers out of thin air you can make any claim you want.
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