Standardized Assessments: Fact vs #EdReform Talking Points
Do you have concerns if the assessments used in your states and for students are valid and age appropriate? Your state can crow about*excellent* assessment results but as you as a parent can’t access the assessment questions (and neither can your school), how do you know these results are valid and your student is learning anything of value?
Gerri K. Songer published (September 2015) a study she performed on the ACT, SAT, PARCC and SBAC using Lexile scores. This is quite different than the nebulous *college and career ready* talking points we hear from ed reform NGOs and state/local educational bureaucrats touting why these assessments are critical to this readiness. Songer’s report deserves a response from supporters of the CCCSSI on why their reform, based on theory and not actual research/facts, is preferable to a study using a scientific method which in antithetical to the proponents’ talking points.
You can find more on her research regarding Common Core research (July 2015) in Gerri K. Songer Explains Why Common Core Tests Are Actually Harmful to Students:
I was asked by my EA President and the Superintendent of IL HS Township Dist. 214 to review Smarter Balanced, ACT, SAT, and PARCC. The following is a portion of my review:
“In terms of text complexity, ACT, SAT, and PARCC all use excessively high level text. PARCC is by far the worst assessment for many reasons, some of them including the use of multiple passages between which comparisons and contrasts are made; finite detail-oriented questions; and multi-step cognitive analysis. Yet, the ACT disseminated last March resembled PARCC in reading and mathematics, with the exception of Standardized Assessments: Fact vs #EdReform Talking Points » Missouri Education Watchdog:
