The scary way Common Core test ‘cut scores’ are selected

[n2doc]

BY VALERIE STRAUSS

You may have given no thought to the “cut scores” that are set for various tests, but they make all the difference in who passes and who fails. What exactly are cut scores? The Educational Testing Service describes them this way:
Cut scores are selected points on the score scale of a test. The points are used to determine whether a particular test score is sufficient for some purpose.

Notice the word “selected.” Cut scores are selected based on criteria that the selectors decide have some meaning. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the criteria have no real validity in revealing student achievement, which is the supposed mission of the test — and that means the scores have no meaning either. This post, by award-winning Prinicipal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, explains all of this in chilling detail.

Burris has been doing a remarkable job of chronicling New York’s botched reform effort for some time on this blog. (You can read some of her work here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Her narrative is important beyond the boundaries of New York, because other states are also doing some of the same things in the name of school reform. Burris was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by thousands of principals teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here.

more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/29/the-scary-way-common-core-test-cut-scores-are-selected/

[Jefferson23]

1. 6 Reasons Why the Common Core is NOT Progressive Ideology

A growing criticism of the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards is that its a way for progressives to inject their philosophies and ideology onto children and youth in American schools.

One reader of this blog made this comment about my post in which I discuss why Bill Gates defends the common core.

Common Core is Progressive Speak for a Nationalized (Common), Centrally Planned (Core), Agenda (Education), System (Standards). It will become a continuous accelerated march to Socialism and to the destruction of America through indoctrination of our kids. It is the means by which Socialists can insinuate better control of children and destroy the influence of parents on kids views, via electronic media teaching (See comment by Wordwaryor, March 26, 2014.

Any thought the standards movement is an idea hatched by progressives is without merit. Indeed, the idea of standards is a conservative idea that proposes that what students learn is out there, and that what is out there can be expressed in discrete sentences or objectives, performances or standards. Further, the idea is that not only can we tell students what they should learn, the standards spell out when.

On this blog I’ve written many posts summarizing the work of others who take a critical look at the standards movement, and its associated high-stakes testing mania. Here are six criticisms of the standards, and their effect on student learning. None of these support the idea that the Common Core was the brainchild of progressive educators: Hint–think John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Alfie Kohn, Lisa Delpit.

1. Brick Walls

In the face of teaching and learning, standards are like brick walls. According to research published by Dr. Carolyn S. Wallace, a professor at the Center for Science Education, Indiana State University, science standards are barriers to teaching and learning in science. She makes this claim in her 2011 study, published in the journal Science Education, entitled Authoritarian Science Curriculum Standards as Barriers to Teaching and Learning: An Interpretation of Personal Experience.

http://www.artofteachingscience.org/6-reason-why-the-common-core-is-not-progressive-ideology/

[madfloridian]

2. Thanks for that. Carol Burris is great.

She really does her research.