Johns Hopkins Researcher Celebrates the “Promise of Louisiana Curriculum” Associated with Common Core (?)
In November 2016, Ashley Berner, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, published this review of her own book, which happens to feature Louisiana as an example of the success of closely aligning curriculum with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) “or a version derived from them” (ahem).
Berner’s review includes some select tidbit examples of Louisiana’s academic success:
There was, however, a surprise finding in the national analysis: Louisiana’s teachers demonstrated a significantly stronger grasp and use of standards-aligned materials and practices than their peers elsewhere. The question was, why?What makes the difference in teacher practices particularly interesting is the recent rise in Louisiana’s student achievement:
- The state’s 4th-grade students had the country’s highest growth on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test and tied with Mississippi for the fastest state growth in math. Louisiana was among the top five states in narrowing several achievement gaps: the white-black gap in 4th-grade math, the white-Hispanic gap in 4th grade math and reading; the white-Hispanic gap in 8th grade math and reading (“NAEP 2015: Mathematics and Reading Assessments” 2015).
- In 2013, Louisiana became one of 12 states to require all juniors to take the ACT test. In 2015, Louisiana’s students gained more points in their composite ACT scores than those in the other 11 states that required 100% participation (“Louisiana Is Number One State in ACT Gain” 2015).
- The College Board announced in 2014 that Louisiana had made the country’s greatest gains in the number of students scoring a 3, 4, or 5 on AP exams, and the number of students taking AP courses more than doubled between 2012 and 2016 (“Louisiana Students Achieve Top Advanced Placement Gains in State History” 2014).
The combination of Louisiana teachers’ distinctive responses and the state’s rising student achievement prompted RAND’s research team to press further. Was there a connection between these two phenomena and how the Louisiana Department of Education had leveraged the standards?
Notice the focus here on “growth” and gains”– which deflects focus from achievement translating into any practical outcome. But we’ll return to these three bullet points of Louisiana student achievement score-upping.
As for quantitative support, Berner surveyed teachers, including Louisiana teachers.
For qualitative support, the researcher questioned the Louisiana Department of Johns Hopkins Researcher Celebrates the “Promise of Louisiana Curriculum” Associated with Common Core (?) | deutsch29:
