Archives for category: Common Core
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Warning: NY Aligns Scores to NAEP

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2013 //
82

New York City’s chief academic officer–a testing zealot–here announces that scores will plummet on the new Common Core tests administered last spring for the first time. They will plummet because the state decided to align its standards to NAEP, which are far more demanding than those of any state.

Over the years, many researchers have maintained that the NAEP achievement levels are “fundamentally flawed” and “unreasonably high.” If you google the terms NAEP and “fundamentally flawed,” you will find many articles criticizing the NAEP benchmarks. Here is a good summary.

What you need to know about NAEP achievement levels is that they are not benchmarked to international standards. They are based on the judgment calls of panels made up of people from different walks of life who decide what students in fourth grade and eighth grade should know and be able to do. It is called “the modified Angoff method” and is very controversial among scholars and psychometricians.

Setting the bar so high is one thing when assessing samples at a state and national level, but quite another when it becomes the basis for judging individual students. It is scientism run amok. It is unethical. It sets the bar where only 30-35% can clear it. Why would we do this to the nation’s children?

Nonetheless, these “unreasonably high” standards are now the guidelines for judging the students of Néw York.

Consequently, teachers and parents can expect to be stunned when the scores are released.

The good news is that teachers and schools will not be punished this year. The punishments start next year.

Here is the letter that went to all public schools with grades 3-8 in Néw York City:

From: Suransky Shael
Sent: Monday, August 05, 2013 1:54 PM
Subject: 2013 State Common Core Test Results

Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing to let you know that your school’s performance data on the 2013 State Common Core tests is now available for you to view. It is important to note that this data is embargoed by the State Education Department (SED)—you are not to share this information until Wednesday, after citywide data is released and the embargo is lifted.

As you review this information and prepare to share it with your school community, please keep in mind the context in which students took these new tests.

At its heart, our ongoing transition to the Common Core standards is about equal opportunity. It is about giving all students a fair chance to develop the skills they will need to pursue higher education and a quality job and have options that will lead to successful and happy lives.

As you know best, this shift is not easy, and so we are also making sure it is not punitive. These results will not be used to evaluate teachers this year, and students and schools will not be punished. The new tests are about developing a realistic understanding of where students are on the path to college and career readiness and adjusting support to improve students’ performance. Educators across the City are investing remarkable energy in this work; from this new baseline, we expect performance to increase.

SED has said the results will be similar to the City’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which also measures being on track for college and career readiness—for the City, similar scores would mean proficiency rates around 25-30 percent. Scores for individual student populations could be lower. These numbers might be familiar—in addition to our NAEP scores, the City’s College Readiness Index is also in this range—but seeing these results may still be jarring at first for you, your school community, and the public.

To access your school’s embargoed results now, you may view the State’s verification reports in L2RPT. After the public release, your school’s results will also be made available through the DOE public website, ATS, ARIS, and ARIS Parent Link; see below for a general timeline of when test results are expected in each system. If you need support accessing your school’s results, contact your network data support liaison.

Data System
Expected Timeline
L2RPT
August 5
DOE public website
August 7 (school-level results only)
ATS
Mid-August, within 1 week of State release
ARIS; ARIS Parent Link
Late August, within 3 weeks of State release
Item Skills Analysis reports (available in ARIS private communities)
September
Note: reports will be available according to tested year and current year enrollment; a version based on early October enrollment will be available in October.

The coming days and weeks will be challenging as we work together to explain these results to students, teachers, families, and the public. We will be providing materials and additional information in Principals’ Weekly to make sure you understand and feel comfortable discussing these results and the work ahead. And we will reiterate, time and time again, that students will not be penalized by these new tests and that they can—with hard work and support from their teachers, principal, and family—reach this new, higher expectation.

Ultimately, no one will be pleased by a measure that is expected to show fewer than 30 percent of students are on track for success after high school. But I deeply believe that this change—and the more accurate understanding that will result—is part of a transition that will benefit thousands of students for years to come, and I thank you for your leadership in supporting your school community through this time.

Best,

Shael

To: Principals of schools with grades 3-8
Cc: All cluster leaders; all network leaders; all superintendents

Categories Common Core, NAEP, New York, New York City, Testing

Intended or Unintended Consequence of “Reform”?

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2013 //
80

A reader sees how “reforms” make public schools undesirable. Is this their purpose?

He writes:

“When you go to a kindergarten meeting (in the wealthy suburbs), and the teachers are telling all the parents, “common core this and common core that/test and test”, I can’t really blame parents for opting out of the entire public school system. That is the danger I see. The wealthier suburban parents will get fed up with all this testing crap, and just take their kids to private schools who still teach students in a more traditional way and don’t try to label their kids as failing. In this way, the common core may succeed. Let’s be honest here. If you had school age kids would you want them going to public school the way it is becoming? Part of me wants a voucher, so I can send my kids to a private school (and I am a public school teacher). I don’t want my kids taking all of these bubble tests, and I will not let my kids become teachers in this crazy country.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Testing

What is the Goal of Common Core Testing?

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2013 //
81

For months, school officials in many states have warned parents to expect proficiency rates on Common Core-aligned tests to plummet.

They have warned that the proportion of students rated proficient was likely to drop by as much as 30%.

When this happens, it will make public education in America look just as bad as the corporate reformers have been claiming.

When New York administered the first Common Core tests last spring, a copy of one fifth grade test was leaked to a Daily News reporter. She sent it to me and I studied it and concluded that the test questions were similar in difficulty to what was typically seen on an eighth grade NAEP test. I went to the NAEP website, looked at the released items and questions, and ranked the fifth grade test as “difficult” for an eighth grader.

Here is a report that I just received from the testing coordinator of a high-performing school in one of the best districts in New York:

“Just to let you know that because I am my school’s test coordinator I just looked at the scores for the ELA.  We are a “high achieving” school.  Last year only 5 students in grades 3, 4 and 5 got a level 1.  Now it is 32. Approximately 40% of our students scored levels 3 and 4 this year down from about 80% last year.  What does this mean?  Nothing because a test that measures skills that could not possibly be taught and is developmentally too hard is INVALID.”

So why the rush to make the tests so hard that more students will fail?

Rick Hess wrote last fall that many of the “reformers” believe that the terrible results (eagerly anticipated by them) will cause suburban parents to demand “reforms” and an escape from their neighborhood schools.

I can’t help but recall that David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core standards, was the treasurer of the board of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst in its first year. If the Common Core tests produce a collapse of proficiency rates, then it makes Rhee and her attacks on public schools look good. Will everyone run for the exits and demand charters and vouchers?

Sick thought, but inescapable.

 

Categories Coleman, David, Common Core, NAEP, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst, Testing

Jersey Jazzman: “College and Career Ready” Standards Are a Fraud

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2013 //
10

Jersey Jazzman noticed that the proportion of students rated as proficient by New York’s State Education Department is very nearly identical to the proportion in the population of the state with a four-year degree.

It occurs to him that the phrase “college and career ready” is phony. It really means “ready for a four-year college degree.”

Should students be failed unless they are ready to get a four-year bachelor’s degree?

This is nuts.

Many good jobs do not require a four-year college degree.

Some graduates with a four-year degree are waiting on tables or selling Apple products for $12 an hour.

Why should New York state penalize students who will be doing important work for society and earning a good living as plumbers, electricians, construction workers, and other careers?

He observes: “…this is all about making the public education system look as bad as possible, so privatizers can move in and teachers unions can lose power. It’s a political agenda; it has nothing to do with education. “College and career ready,” like “achievement gap” and “x months of learning,” is a useless, phony phrase designed to set the parameters of the debate in a way that favors those who would blame our country’s serious problems almost exclusively on our public schools. Be on your guard whenever you hear it used – you’re probably being conned. “

 

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Economy, Higher Education, Privatization

Stotsky: Why I Oppose Common Core

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2013 //
11

Sandra Stotsky was in charge of developing the outstanding academic curriculum frameworks in Massachusetts in the 1990s. She served on one of the committees that participated in the shaping of he Common Core. She certainly believes in standards and testing. She is now one of the most outspoken critics of Common Core. In this article, she explains why. She believes that the insistence on one-size-fits-all will lower standards, not raise them.

Categories Common Core

How “Reform” Is Ruining Education and Killing Schoools

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2013 //
22

A comment from a reader who has seen the results of No Child Left Behind:

“1) The system is broken from top to bottom. The vast majority of people making these decisions have not set foot into a classroom since they graduated from college.

2) An administrator makes any where from double to four times as much money as the teachers who work 50+ hours a week teaching, prepping, and grading.

3) Common Core, NCLB, Race to the Top, and any other program designed to “make education better” are nothing more than band-aids that only slow the bleeding. We need to completely reconstruct our education system from the bottom up and focus more on the individual needs of every child through curriculums designed to highlight the creative exceptionalism of each child.

4) Cutting money from the public system to then allow room for vouchers should be a red flag to any citizen with an ounce of common sense – we’re not addressing the issue of horrible school reforms of the past, but instead we’re aiding in the speed of how fast our public system will die. If every child deserves a quality education, why aren’t we evaluating our current system and finding ways to completely reconstruct it in a way that it is successful.

5) For everyone on this board who has attacked educators and their apparent “lazy” behaviors, it is obvious that you have no idea what is happening inside the classrooms now. Since “A Nation at Risk”, teachers have been slowly stripped of their ability to do what it is that they are overpaid to do: teach. Instead, they have been forced into a world of teaching to a test that barely covers the amount of practical knowledge students need. I am an English Teacher at a community college here in NC, and every semester in my 2-3 freshman comp classes I see the results of NCLB. I have 30 18-21-year-olds who can’t write a complete sentence. I have never blamed a single high school teacher, middle school teacher, nor have I blamed any elementary teacher for this lack of skill. 15 years ago when I entered the profession, the quality was much higher even for a community college. I have witnessed the slow decline of intelligence, and it has nothing to do with the teachers, but the resources that these teachers are losing. You want to support the cut in funding? Fine. Let’s divert the money that administration is getting into better programs, let’s re-envision how education works and construct a system that allows for the money we are dealt, and let’s face the facts: “bad” teachers make up less than 5% of the working population. The rest of the teachers out there are fighting to keep this sinking ship afloat.

If you think you can do a better job, get the damn degree and do the job yourself. Other wise, let the people who have been trained to do this job do their job.

Categories Common Core, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top

Marco Rubio Opposes Common Core, Breaks with Jeb Bush

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2013 //
25

The biggest fight over the Common Core is within conservative ranks.

On one side, supporting Common Core, is Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and big business (last February, 72 major corporations put out a full-page ad supporting the Common Core as necessary for the future of our economy).

On the other is Tea Party activists and other small-government conservatives who worry about federal control of education.

Jeb Bush is clearly the heaviest hitter pushing for Common Core.  When ALEC was about to come out against Common Core, Jeb persuaded them to stay neutral.

Now Senator Marco Rubio, one of Jeb’s closest allies, has come out against the Common Core.

We will watch and see how all this shakes out over time.

Clearly, Rubio sees some political advantage in attacking Common Core, even though his patron is its biggest promoter.

 

Categories Common Core, Florida

Common Core: Is the Sky Falling?

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2013 //
54

As parent resistance to high-stakes testing rises, so does public rejection of the Common Core. Several states are considering debating whether to drop the standards, and two–Georgia and Oklahoma–are dropping the testing because of its cost.

Stephanie Simon, who wrote many great investigative pieces for Reuters, has moved to Politico. There she questions whether Common Core is failing, a victim of hubris and cost. She points out that Georgia and Oklahoma have withdrawn from Common Core testing, and other states are debating whether to ditch the standards, the testing, or both.

But at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a conservative think tank that is a cheerleader for the Common Core, Checker Finn shrugs off the dropouts and says that Common Core is right sizing. Checker sees a great need to be able to compare individual students in different states who take common tests, a need that I don’t share. Common Core tests will demonstrate what NAEP has shown for 40 years: kids from advantaged homes get higher test scores on average than kids with fewer advantages.

And then what? Instead of spending $16-20 Billion to get data that tell us what we already know, couldn’t we think of better ways to spend those billions, ways that actually might help kids do better in school?

Checker implies that the states that drop out of Common Core or don’t fully implement it will see grave consequences in “unemployment rates, economic-growth rates,” and other indicators. It will of course be interesting to see whether there is any relationship between the Common Core and economic growth. There is no objective reason, none based on evidence or experience, to say that there is. No one can say with any certainty what the effects of Common Core will be. How do they know? All sorts of grandiose claims have been made for Common Core, but no one knows whether Common Core will make any difference, whether it will increase achievement gaps, or anything else. No one knows.

The curious thing about the Common Core is that both its most fervent advocates and its loudest detractors are on the right side of the political spectrum.

Its cheerleaders include Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Bill Gates, the Fordham Institute, major corporations, chambers of commerce, as well as Secretary Duncan.

Its fiercest opponents include Tea Party activists, the libertarian Cato Institute, Jay Greene at the University of Arkansas, and the Pioneer Institute in Boston. Some object to federal intrusion into state and local matters. Some object to national standards on principle.

Most of the heavy hitters on the right love the Common Core. Some gleefully anticipate the sharp decline in proficiency rates that Common Core testing will generate, since the tests are supposed to be “harder.” They eagerly anticipate the bad news that will prove their belief that public education must be privatized. Some see the coming bad news as an opportunity to market their eduschlock, others welcome it as a boost for charters and vouchers. Common Core, its allies on the right believe, will unleash the “creative destruction” in which they fervently believe. For Other People’s Children.

Categories Common Core

Georgia Withdraws from PARCC Testing Consortium

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2013 //
30

The U.S. Department of Education is prohibited by law from interfering in curriculum, but Secretary Duncan was itching to get the Common Core standards adopted. First, he said that states would not be eligible for a share of $5 billion in federal stimulus funds unless they adopted common college-and-career-readiness standards. Wink, wink, almost every state agreed to adopt the Common Core.

Then the Secretary awarded $350 million to two consortia for the purpose of developing tests of the Common Core (which of course he had nothing to do with).

Last, he offered waivers from the absurd requirements of NCLB but only for states that went along with Common Core.

Not so fast: some parents are in revolt against the deluged testing, and some states don’t have the technology and can’t pay the heavy costs.

Georgia just dropped out of the PARCC consortium. Below are the stated reasons:

July 22, 2013 – State School Superintendent Dr. John Barge and Gov. Nathan Deal announced today that Georgia is withdrawing from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test development consortium.

Instead, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) will work with educators across the state to create standardized tests aligned to Georgia’s current academic standards in mathematics and English language arts for elementary, middle and high school students. Additionally, Georgia will seek opportunities to collaborate with other states.

Creating the tests in Georgia will ensure that the state maintains control over its academic standards and student testing, whereas a common assessment would have prevented GaDOE from being able to adjust and rewrite Georgia’s standards when educators indicate revisions are needed to best serve students.

“After talking with district superintendents, administrators, teachers, parents, lawmakers and members of many communities, I believe this is the best decision for Georgia’s students,” Superintendent Barge said. “We must ensure that our assessments provide educators with critical information about student learning and contribute to the work of improving educational opportunities for every student.”

Georgia was one of 22 states to join PARCC several years ago with the aim of developing next generation student assessments in mathematics and English language arts by 2014-15.

“Assessing our students’ academic performance remains a critical need to ensure that young Georgians can compete on equal footing with their peers throughout the country,” Gov. Deal said. “Georgia can create an equally rigorous measurement without the high costs associated with this particular test. Just as we do in all other branches of state government, we can create better value for taxpayers while maintaining the same level of quality.”

Superintendent Barge was one of the state school chiefs serving on the governing board for the consortium, but he frequently voiced concerns about the cost of the PARCC assessments. The PARCC assessments in English language arts and math are estimated to cost significantly more money than Georgia currently spends on its entire testing program.

Superintendent Barge also expressed concerns over the technology requirements for PARCC’s online tests. Many Georgia school districts do not have the needed equipment or bandwidth to handle administering the PARCC assessments.

As GaDOE begins to build new assessments, please note that our Georgia assessments:
· will be aligned to the math and English language arts state standards;
· will be high-quality and rigorous;
· will be developed for students in grades 3 through 8 and high school;
· will be reviewed by Georgia teachers;
· will require less time to administer than the PARCC assessments;
· will be offered in both computer- and paper-based formats; and
· will include a variety of item types, such as performance-based and multiple-choice items.

“We are grateful to Georgia educators who have worked hard to help develop our standards and assessments,” Superintendent Barge said. “We look forward to continuing to work with them to develop a new assessment system for our state.”

——————————————–
Matt Cardoza
Director of Communications
Georgia Department of Education
2062 Twin Towers East
205 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive SE
Atlanta, GA 30334
(404) 651-7358
mcardoza@doe.k12.ga.us
http://www.gadoe.org
Follow us on Twitter: @gadoenews and @drjohnbarge
Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gadoe

“Making Education Work for All Georgians”

Categories Common Core, Georgia, Testing

Can Children Be Measured Like Corn As They Grow?

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2013 //
22

Amy Prime is a second grade teacher in Iowa and a parent of five children. She knows how different each of her children are.

In this article, she wonders how the Common Core will work, and she draws an analogy with farmers growing corn.

Her analogy begins like this:

“It is easy to like the common core in theory. We want all of our kids to have the same skills when they graduate, right? But the problem with this idea is that our children don’t start out life the same, they don’t learn the same, and they aren’t meant to grow up to be identical either.

“We all start out as seeds but, when grown, some of us become fruits or vegetables, some trees, and some flowers.

“Imagine that there is a company that makes corn-based products. So they donate a lot of money to politicians and then convince them that our farmers are doing a poor job of growing corn. The politicians agree and then recruit a research company to decide what an ideal crop of corn would look like when grown. The people in this research company have never actually grown corn before, but they come up with criteria for what this corn should look like anyway.”

Categories Common Core
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