More Numbers Games with Common Core Assessments
New York city's numbers are in for the first major round of common core testing and the news looks bad. According to the New York State Education Department only 26 percent of students in 3rd-8th grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math. You may remember that last year Kentucky saw similar results. The news headlines are declaring this proof that better standards and tests were necessary. But is it really, or is it just a numbers game to create the type of crisis Rahm Emmanuel likes to take advantage of that nudges us, as Cass Sunstein wants to do, into making the "right" choices?
Note that the figures reported are for students who "passed" the test, not raw scores of the percentage correct on the exam. Some body determines what "passing" means, usually referred to as cut scores, and that number can be set low, as Oklahoma did with NCLB assessments, or set high, as many are claiming the New York Regents just did with their latest assessments. There are problems with both approaches.
The situation in Oklahoma is actually one of the major justifications for common standards and assessments. On paper, OK students looked great because percentage wise so many of them were passing their state exams. That is because they set the passing bar fairly low. Unfortunately, most businesses don't take the time to really study a state's education figures (they don't do their homework) and OK was able to lure companies into their state by touting inflated student performance figures. The other governors wanted to put a stop to that. That is what gave us SBAC.
New York has a different agenda. They want to prove that their previous tests were too easy and that their kids NEED
The situation in Oklahoma is actually one of the major justifications for common standards and assessments. On paper, OK students looked great because percentage wise so many of them were passing their state exams. That is because they set the passing bar fairly low. Unfortunately, most businesses don't take the time to really study a state's education figures (they don't do their homework) and OK was able to lure companies into their state by touting inflated student performance figures. The other governors wanted to put a stop to that. That is what gave us SBAC.
New York has a different agenda. They want to prove that their previous tests were too easy and that their kids NEED