Carol Burris, veteran principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, Néw York, retired this week, to the tears of students, parents, and staff. In this article, part of a blog debate at The Hechinger Report, she explains her negative view of Common Core.

 

She opposes the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, and she cites what is known as Campbell’s Law:

 

“When test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.”

 

VAM is so unreliable that the Hillsborough Teacher of the Year in 2014 received a negative rating!

 

The Common Core is an integral part of a failed national strategy, she writes:

 

“Now back to the Common Core. I am not sure what you mean when you say that I “personified” the standards and that I believe the Common Core is “the root of the problems we are facing in education.” The Common Core is but one part of a failed reform strategy. The Common Core, teacher evaluation using student tests scores, Common Core tests, the expansion of charter schools and other disruptive change strategies were pushed by the $4.35 billion competitive grant known as Race to the Top. All are presented as interconnected parts of a school improvement plan.”

 

Burris gives examples of algebra questions that were based on concepts in advanced classes; most students had not been taught the concepts.

 

In her own school, the failure of the standards and the tests were obvious:

 

“Only 48% of Rockville Centre first-time test takers achieved that score. That excludes students who previously took and failed the test—if they were included the percentage would be lower still.

 

“This year South Side High School had no dropouts and our four-year graduation rate was 98%. Should we conclude that only about half of the graduates of my high school are college-ready, and that in the future, only 48% should graduate based on the results of this test?

 

“Every other indicator contradicts that conclusion. Every year, over 70% of our graduates pass an International Baccalaureate exam in mathematics. When I checked last fall, 92% of our entire Class of 2012 was successfully enrolled in college two years after graduation. My summer survey of whether students were required to take remediation resulted in only a handful of students. All were either English language learners or students with disabilities.

 

“So, Jayne, what should I believe? The Common Core test results, which say over half of our students are not prepared for college, or over a decade’s worth of evidence that tells me nearly all of them are? I understand that my school is well-resourced with only a 16% poverty rate. But surely the juxtaposition of Common Core scores with my school’s longstanding track record of producing college-ready students indicates that there is something wrong with the Common Core standards as measured by Common Core-aligned tests. It is time we move beyond the rhetoric and critically question the assumptions on which these reforms rest.”