What this spring’s Common Core tests promised, and what they will actually deliver
Four years and over $360 million later, new Common Core tests are here. What’s new and what isn’t
Muslim Alkurdi, 18, of Albuquerque High School, joins hundreds of classmates in Albuquerque, N.M, Monday, March 2, 2015, as students staged a walkout to protest a new standardized test they say isn’t an accurate measurement of their education. Students frustrated over the new exam walked out of schools across the state Monday in protest as the new exam was being given. The backlash came as millions of U.S. students start taking more rigorous exams aligned with Common Core standards. AP Photo/Russell Contreras
New Common Core tests are debuting on time this spring, but after years of bruising attacks from both left and right, the groups tapped by the federal government to build them are struggling to meet all the hype.
Back in 2010, the plans for the new exams were introduced with much fanfare and many promises: The exams would end the era of dumbed-down multiple-choice tests and the weeks of mindless prepping that precede them. They would force teachers to introduce more critical thinking and in-depth study. They would bring coherency to a mishmash of state tests and for the first time allow states to compare local students to their peers elsewhere in the U.S. And with their online format, the new tests would make testing more efficient, more accurate and more relevant to the digital age.
But a lot has changed since U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, heralding the arrival of “Assessments 2.0,” promised teachers the tests that many of them had “longed for.”
“One-shot, year-end bubble tests administered on a single day, too often lead to a dummying down of curriculum,” Duncan said of the old state tests. The new exams would test “critical thinking skills and complex student learning.”
The federal government invested $360 million on a grant competition to spur development of the new tests. Two coalitions of states — calling themselves the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium — won grants after agreeing to create tests aligned to the Common Core, a set of grade-level expectations in math and English adopted by over 40 states. States hurried to sign up after the U.S. Department of Education made college- and career-ready exams a condition for some federal funding.
Since then political battles over the Common Core have dampened enthusiasm for the tests. Some have cried foul over how the federal government incentivized the program, calling it federal overreach. Others have complained about how long these tests will take — Smarter Balanced will take eight and a half hours, while some PARCC tests will take over ten hours. Yet more critics have panned the tests because they will be used in some states to evaluate teachers.
This spring, of the original 26 states that signed up for PARCC, just 11 plus Washington, D.C. are giving the test. Of the original 31 signed up for Smarter Balanced, only 18 are still on board. (In the early years, some states were members of both coalitions.) Several of the states What this spring’s Common Core tests promised, and what they will actually deliver - The Hechinger Report:
