Common Core Tests are Not Good for Children or Other Living Things
Last week I wrote an essay that suggested that the entire obsession with test score-based accountability is a scam, aimed at discrediting public education in order to create opportunities in the education market for private ventures. Today, as I read this analysis by New York's brilliant principal Carol Burris I had a thought about another possible aim that might be at work.
Burris describes in detail the arcane process by which the cut scores for the New York Common Core tests were set. I will not attempt to restate this analysis - please read it for yourself.The bottom line is that the key tool being used to determine the cut score is the SAT, and this test is much more like an IQ test than a criterion referenced test. Which means that coaching does not matter much. TEACHING does not matter so much. Student scores on this test will ALWAYS take the shape of a bell curve, and we have, in essence, placed the cut score for the Common Core test on the right side of that curve, condemning the bottom two thirds of our students as "not college ready."
As Burris points out, this has very real consequences:
The scores on these tests are used by schools to make decisions about kids--to retain