Growing dropout of states in Common core testing
(Colo.) Five years after 43 states and the District of Columbia officially adopted a new set of national education goals, fewer than half will actually administer assessments this year fully aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
New research out this month reveals that not only are fewer states administering exams tied to the new standards but that membership has declined in the two national consortia that developed those tests – Smarter Balanced and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career.
In fact, that drop in membership is very likely behind an announcement last week by PARCC that it is restructuring its testing system to provide access options to more states, including non-member states, said researchers from the Education Commission of the States, a non-partisan education research and policy tracking agency based in Denver.
“That, I think, is in response to some states exiting and some of the political backlash over the assessments,” said ECS’s Julie Woods, the lead researcher on a report identifying state summative assessments being given in all 50 states. “Both of the consortia have started to sort of open up a little bit to more flexibility and I think you see that in PARCC’s announcement.”
The analysis comes even as student assessment systems in many states are still evolving. In just the past year alone, at least 15 states have made significant changes to their assessment systems, said Woods in an interview last week. That number, she said, includes states that have left one of the two testing consortia and have developed their own assessments or those that have taken their own “unique route” and created tests that blend elements of their consortia’s exam with state-specific items.
“It’s really difficult, frankly, to keep track of,” Woods said. “I know this piece we just put out will probably be out of date within a month.”
For now however, just six of PARCC’s 12 member states and the District of Columbia plan to administer the consortium’s full assessment this year, ECS found, and 14 of Smarter Balanced’s 15 member states (the U.S. Virgin Islands and select schools in the Bureau of Indian Education are with Smarter Balanced as well) will give that consortium’s full range of tests.
At least 25 states will administer state-specific assessments while the remaining handful is still in development stages.
Louisiana, a former PARCC member that dropped out due to political controversy over the Common Core standards, announced on Friday that it would use PARCC content for just under half of a new state assessment system it is developing.
Massachusetts allowed its districts last year to choose between administering PARCC assessments or its existing MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System). There continues to be debate Growing dropout of states in Common core testing :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
Charter group calls for closure of two of its own
(Calif.) The state’s preeminent arbiter of charter school performance is calling this week for the closure of two campuses deemed to be falling short of meeting even minimum academic standards.
The petitions authorizing Oasis Charter Public School in Monterey County and Century Academy for Excellence in Los Angeles County should not be renewed, the California Charter Schools Association said Wednesday, because they have consistently ranked among the lowest performing schools in the state and have not demonstrated substantial growth over time.
“We understand that closing a school is a heavy decision and is difficult for families, but keeping students in schools that are not providing the education they deserve is far worse,” Myrna Castrejon, acting CEO of CCSA, said in a statement. “Furthermore, the time and resources needed to overcome several years of low performance are a far less effective use of public funds than it is to close a chronically underperforming school.”
The organization’s annual “call for non-renewal” of low performing charters comes as California is in the midst of transitioning to a new school accountability system – based on the Common Core standards – that, while still using test scores, also takes into account other indicators of student achievement.
While public charter schools are subject to some of the same state accountability requirements as traditional schools, they also operate with a greater degree of autonomy from government regulation in exchange for meeting the terms of their locally- or state-approved petition to operate. Those terms generally call for demonstrated success in the areas of student academic achievement, Charter group calls for closure of two of its own
