Here is an interesting item from Politico.com:
OHIO FACING COMMON CORE CRITICISM: Critics say the Ohio State Board of Education is practicing some fuzzy math on the Common Core, having voted earlier this week to depart from general benchmarks on the PARCC exam. Students who are “nearing expectations” according to PARCC benchmarks will be given a promotion of sorts in Ohio, where they’ll be considered “proficient.” If Ohio stuck with PARCC’s benchmarks, about a third of students would be meeting standards, according to the early data, which includes only students who took the online tests. The board’s change roughly doubles the number of students meeting standards. “This discrepancy should give pause to parents, community leaders and policy makers who expect transparency in Ohio’s transition to higher standards and new tests,” Karen Nussle, executive director of the pro-Common Core group Collaborative for Student Success, wrote [http://bit.ly/1gvjPer] in a memo earlier this week. It “suggests that Ohio has set the proficiency bar too low and undermines the promise of ensuring kids are on track for college and career.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer has more on the change: http://bit.ly/1iSCOBq.
Now, if I understand the critics correctly, they truly wanted 2/3 of all students to fail. They are disappointed that the state board of education created a level called “nearing expectations” that raised the proportion of students who met standards.
The critics thought that Ohio had watered down the “rigorous” standards of the Common Core and PARCC. They want more kids to fail! No excuses!
Begin with the fact that no one knows whether the Common Core or the PARCC/SBAC tests measure “college and career readiness.” How could anyone know? No one has actually gone on to college or career after using these standards and tests.
Maybe the tests have set their passing mark so high that most kids will fail them every year. What will we do with the kids who never get promoted? And the kids who never graduate from high school? Will students be allowed to advance if they have not met the “proficient” level of PARCC? Proficient on PARCC is aligned with proficient on NAEP. In no state other than Massachusetts have 50% reached proficient. That’s over a 23-year time span, since NAEP started assessing the states in 1992. If the same pattern is reflected in the schools with PARCC and SBAC, only 1/3 of students will ever be promoted or graduate. Maybe it might rise to 40%.
Will this generation of students stay in the same grade in school until they drop out? New kids will keep coming into kindergarten. At some point, one of these deep thinkers should think through the logic of their demands. Why are they so insistent that 2/3 of students must fail? Have they ever looked at the research on how children are affected in their motivation to try when they fail and fail and fail?
Maybe the Common Core and the tests measure who will be ready for an elite Ivy League university. But what about the students who plan to go to a state university or a community college? How do the tests measure readiness to work as a nurse, a construction worker, a retail salesperson, a medical technician, or any of the other occupations that will create the most new jobs (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) in the next decade?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I must wonder why the right wing Ohio State School Board would miss an opportunity to call Ohio schools and school kids failures? Could it be that they truly fear the strength of the Opt Out Movement (especially NY) and hope to do all they can to avoid the mutiny spreading in the Buckeye state?
Where this is going to obvious to me—a return to the era before the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Children who don’t keep up, starting in kindergarten, will be tracked and eventually dropped out of school if they are not deemed college and career ready.
Indentured servitude for children will eventually make a comeback and as poverty grows and parents become more desperate, children will be on the auction block again as young age age 7.
In 1900, 18 percent of all American workers were under the age of 16. Although child labor has been substantially eliminated, it still poses a problem in a few areas of the economy. Violations of the child labor laws continue among economically impoverished migrant agricultural workers. Employers in the garment industry in New York City have turned to the children of illegal immigrants in an effort to compete with imports from low-wage nations.
I think there is more to the war on our public schools than just turning them over to corporations. This war will also result in a large, cheep labor pool of easy to control workers. In 1900, 40% of Americans lived in poverty and 7% of 17/18 year olds graduated from high school.
The oligarchs, who are funding the corporate education deform war, are turning the clock back. They are all white and old. A form of slavery is on its way back.
Lloyd,
Do we need millions of manual laborers? Shall we revive child labor? The 2/3 who never get promoted and never graduate need some way to feed themselves
I’m sure that the corporations have that figured out too. They will duplicate China’s factory model with on-site dorms for the workers to live in and cafeterias where they eat, and schools for the workers children to at least sixth grade like China does. The only children who will be allowed to go to high school will be the top test tackers like they do in China, and the same will apply to those who move on to college.
Some public universities in Ohio and/or, colleges within them, are similar to Michigan’s. They compete for the same students that the ivy leagues do. Less likelihood to waive admittance requirements, for people of privilege, like former Pres. Bush, is what differentiates public universities. The endowments of public universities and graduate accomplishments rival those of the ivy leagues.
Included in a summary of the absurdity of unachievable standards, should be the reformers’ willful ignorance of the missing link between imposition of high standards and improved academic performance.
I saw this while looking through NAEP website for clarification on the levels. What really struck me was the last sentence. How can states justify using these levels for state testing if NAEP states that they are still deciding if they are “Reasonable, valid, and informative to the public”?
The Status of Achievement Levels
“The 2001 reauthorization law requires that the achievement levels be used on a trial basis until the Commissioner of Education Statistics determines that the achievement levels are “reasonable, valid, and informative to the public” (see the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, P.L. 107-110, 115 Stat. 1425 [2002]). Until that determination is made, the law requires the Commissioner and the National Assessment Governing Board to state clearly the trial status of the achievement levels in all NAEP reports. So far, no Commissioner has made such a determination, and the achievement levels remain in a trial status. The achievement levels should continue to be interpreted and used with caution.”
Tricia,
The NAEP levels have been on trial since they were adopted nearly 25 years ago. Yet now the passing mark on the CC tests are aligned to them. NAEP proficiency is not grade level. It marks solid academic achievement
WHY CAN’T NAEP just stop calling it “proficient?” Why can’t they call the levels “developing, then “proficient,” then “advanced,” and then “exceptional?” That change in semantics would help a lot in these arguments, it would be easy to do, and it would get a lot of pressure off of teachers. It’s simple. Why don’t they do it??
TOW,
The NAEP achievement levels were set in the early 1990s, when Checker Finn was chair of the NAEP governing board. They have been criticized by testing scholars repeatedly as unreasonable
So glad to see the Common Core isn’t “all about the tests”!.
100% of the energy in the ed reform “movement” is going toward the tests.
When the Common Core becomes “all about the test” like every other ed reform for the last 15 years, they shouldn’t complain. They are 100% responsible for it.
Weren’t parents promised that the Common Core was “more than a score”? Why is the entire political/lobbyist class focused on these test scores, then? What happened to all the nuance and “deep focus on quality” we were promised? I guess that all comes second the ed reform political goals where 70% of students have to be shown to be “failing”.
Hey, weren’t public schools promised “supports” along with the testing? Did anyone get that in writing ? When does the “support” for the Common Core start?
I hope this isn’t another ed reform where we get the grim , joyless testing regime and nothing else.
Chiara: as others have written before, far more eloquently and probingly than I have, whatever the verbiage that comes out of the mouths of the enforcers and enablers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement about taking everything into account—
It all circles back relentlessly to massaging and torturing the numbers & stats produced by standardized tests. To one thing. And one thing only.
And that one thing can’t be questioned. It must be accepted, without objection or delay.
Said beat down to be applied, natcherly, only to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
For THEIR OWN CHILDREN, there’s Lakeside School and such.
¿? What’s the diff? Here’s a tidbit from the website of the place where Bill Gates went to school and where he now sends his own two children. Academics overview, entitled “A Commitment to Excellence”—
[start]
Lakeside’s 5th- to 12th-grade student-centered academic program focuses on the relationships between talented students and capable and caring teachers. We develop and nurture students’ passions and abilities and ensure every student feels known.
The cultural and economic diversity of our community, the teaching styles, and the approaches to learning are all essential to Lakeside academics. We believe that in today’s global world, our students need to know more than one culture, one history, and one language.
Each student’s curiosities and capabilities lead them to unique academic challenges that are sustained through a culture of support and encouragement. All students will find opportunities to discover and develop a passion; to hone the skills of writing, thinking, and speaking; and to interact with the world both on and off campus. Lakeside trusts that each student has effective ideas about how to maximize his or her own education, and that they will positively contribute to our vibrant learning community.
To learn more about academics at Lakeside, choose a campus to the right.
[end]
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=120814
For the shills and trolls that visit this blog, I noticed some unforgivable omissions like “test prep” and “grit” and “determination” and “STEM” and “SLANT” and such.
😱
Let me know when you organize a rescue party to save those kids from the horrors of a Lakeside School experience.
But Chiara and I won’t be joining your mission of mercy…
😎
It’s a shame because I don’t hate the Common Core. I like the math and the English is fine, although I’m obviously not an expert.
Why they have to go so nuts over these tests is beyond me. They ruin everything they do with this insane focus on test scores.
So much for the “national ruler” to measure. Look’s like the governor’s foot in Ohio is a different size than the governor’s foot in New York.
I think they probably did it for practical reasons. Ohio adopts every ed reform that comes along- they pile one on top of another.
They probably would have run into trouble with the 500 other ed reform initiatives that are pegged to test scores if they had failed 70% of kids.
Also, I never believed the Common Core was “state-led” and I’m not a conservative so I don’t care, but weren’t we told states were running this? How can states be running it if they’re all adopting a national cut score?
“The Hokey Mathy”
You put your cut score in
You take your cut score out
You put your cut score in
Then you shake it all about
You do the Hokey Mathy
And you turn yourself around
That’s what it’s all about!
Also, Ohio lawmakers are busy fixing the last ed reform. I don’t think they’ll have time to address the problems with the newest ed reform:
“Now, like 200 other charters, the school has closed, adding to the $1 billion in taxpayer funding given to failed charter schools. More charter schools closed last year than at any point in the industry’s 17-year history in Ohio.
For Foxworth, the closure meant finding a new school with only a few days notice. Her mother said teachers — not administrators — told her of the school’s financial woes and likely closure.
As Foxworth searched for a new education, Akron Public Schools sifted through records for more than 60 students who attended the school. None contained complete attendance counts or test scores, or adequate proof that students ever went there.”
“There’s a complicated paper trail that connects Hoffman’s company and the private landlord to the publicly funded school, as well as its founders and the vocational program they touted.
It starts with $125 in March 2012 when Hoffman paid the state to create the charter school. A month later, he did the same to launch his company, Blue Lake Educational Management — a “limited liability company” that shields Hoffman or school founder John Hairston from personal liability.”
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/akron-charter-school-closes-details-emerge-on-unreported-violence-mismanagement-students-are-cut-adrift-1.625410#.Vf7X-ZqJzPk.twitter
They should put a cease and desist order on all of the so called “reform” until they can prove that any of this works. What we are doing is worse than jumping on a bandwagon. It is like jumping on a Titanic of bad, unvetted ideas. All of the ideas come from politicians, economists and statisticians that are clearly out of their depth. Start listening to educators that are experts in the field of education. Stop acting like billionaires and corporations know what is best for our children. All they know is how to make money while the continuously lower the “bottom line.” That bottom line is our children or grandchildren, the future. What we are doing is pure insanity.
The results are in, close reading is about as much of a catalyst for dramatically improving learning as sentence diagramming. The most important ingredient in education, the ephemeral spark of interest, got missed on the list.
I loved sentence diagramming, although as you aptly point out, it serves no purpose. I went on to study languages and became an ESL teacher, which, back in the old days, was like applied linguistics. Maybe it all started with sentence diagramming?
Retired teacher, I love sentence diagramming too.
Me too. I got better at it when I became a better writer. Not the other way around.
How does anyone anywhere know what the cut score should be?
West Coast Teacher
Cut scores are arbitrary and subjective. They can be set so that 90% pass or 90% fail. Or any other number.