Common Core: The Corporate Adjustment Curriculum

Although many people believe the Common Core is dead, it is alive and well in most states, even though the Federal bribes to adopt it in the states have dried up.  In Tennessee and other red states, Common Core became such a toxic brand that it was repackaged under a different name and pushed forward as a state initiative.  But make no mistake--the Common Core remains a high priority of neolibs who run the DNC and the RNC. 

Over the past year or so, the corporate media has painted those opposed to Common Core as right-wing fanatics who simply want to kill another Obama initiative out of spite.  No doubt there are some of those among the opposition, but the deeper and more substantive opposition comes from those who see Common Core as the imposition of corporate control over second-rate learning in public schools.  Making this prospect even more unacceptable to thinking people is the knowledge that students enrolled in public schools are being force fed curriculum that does not allow them to  compete for seats in the best universities and technical colleges. 

If you think I am engaging in conspiracy talk, listen to this brief clip from 2010, as one of the three Common Core architects answers questions regarding what competency means for the new Common Core standards. 

From Youtube commentary on the short video:

The speaker is Jason Zimba, one of the three drafters of the Common Core math standards. The questioner is Dr. Sandra Stotsky. This exchange took place at a meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on March 23, 2010. As you will hear, Dr. Zimba admits not only that the CC math standards aren't designed to prepare students for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) studies, but also that they're not designed to get a student into any selective college, even in a non-STEM discipline.

The 10 Page Common Core Report Card

Introducing the latest pile of bullshit from the Common Core technotwits--a report card that parents can't understand and that tells children nothing they need to know--all in a forest-devastating 10 pages of itemized, um, standards.  If you believe that everything children need to learn in school can be reduced to mountain of discrete infobits, then you are soon to be the winner of an schooling system based on children becoming "competent" in those infobits long enough to click the correct  screen item, thus demonstrating as much. 

Education based on an sea of sequential competencies that students can push through individually as if they were mowing an endless prairie?  Sounds enticing, doesn't it.  No teachers, no buildings, no worry: Phoenix Elementary, Phoenix Middle, Phoenix High, and of course, the University of Phoenix.

But privileged parents should not worry.  Real schools with real human teachers and assessments will always be available for the "top income tenth" who will be the required designers of our brave new education future.

By Kathy Boccella, Staff Writer
POSTED: May 23, 2016

As a lawyer, Dennis Weldon has to make sense of tortuous legal papers. But a year ago, the Plumstead Township resident opened a nine-page document that left him flummoxed.

It was his child's report card from Gayman Elementary School in the Central Bucks School District.

Gone was the traditional A-B-C-D-F report from the teacher. Instead, parents were sent to their computers to click open a nine-page digital document with row after row of learning standards and success indicators for specific reading or math skills. Grades ranged from a high of E (exceeding standards), through M (meeting standards) and A (approaching standards), down to LP (limited progress).

Weldon said his wife, also a lawyer, struggled to comprehend the new "standards-based" report card, too. Another Central Bucks parent, a lawyer as well, told Weldon: "I don't even open it. . . . It's information overload."

The district has posted a 10-page handbook and seven videos on its website on how to interpret the evaluations, introduced in 2014 and used only in the elementary schools.

Many parents give the leading-edge system an F in the most important subject: telling them how their children are doing.. . . .

. . . . Along with arguing that the new report cards are what internet users might call "tl; dr" - "too long; didn't read" - many Central Bucks parents say they worry that the grading system rewards mediocrity by lumping too many students in the middle, as M's, and takes up too much teacher time.

"It works equally horribly for the student who wants to do better and the student who doesn't want to try too hard," said Dana Hunter of Doylestown, who sends two of her three children to Cold Spring Elementary. "I've had kids say: 'This is great. It doesn't matter how many I get wrong, I just get an M on everything.' "

Her kids agree. "They're too vague," said Sam, 8, a third grader who doesn't like to ace his tests and get an M while his lower-achieving classmates also get M's. . . . .

PARCC and Pearson's Failure Production Machine

When I was an English major in the late 1960s, I was immersed in the late stages of the New Criticism, a literary theory that tried to examine a work of literature based on formal structural elements that bracketed authorial intent or social milieu.  

The New Criticism was a neo-Platonic concept based on the shaky premise that literary value can be ascertained without the messy issues that arise when we examine literature as a reflection of the human condition or as a cultural artifact with some significance for understanding the world we occupy as sentient beings.

A generation and a half after I graduated from college the old New Criticism was rediscovered by another set of narrow-lapeled and socially-removed corporate intellectuals, some of whom (David Coleman included) were to become the authors of the new curriculum that has earned the toxic moniker of Common Core.  Who knew that fourth graders would soon be charged with what we were trying to do with the New Criticism in the 60s,  as we scribbled into our blue books while chain smoking at our skinny classroom armchairs at Austin Peay State U.

In New Jersey and Delaware, assessing progress on the Common Core is handled by Pearson, the international mega-corporation that sells the tests, testing software, test prep materials, professional development units, computer tutorials, etc.  

Pearson's first task as the vendor or record is to show that there is a serious problem in need of their solutions, which are shrink-wrapped on pallets in huge warehouses ready to ship to the four corners of the nation and beyond.  

Fortunately for us, teachers in New Jersey and Delaware are working together to expose the fraud.  A clip below.  Please do read on:

 

Since I’m in Delaware, I couldn’t reveal my signed obligations… But someone in New Jersey can… And likewise, I can reveal questions off the PAARC in New Jersey, whereas no teacher in New Jersey can…..

And it is all legal.  Neither of us violated our signed statements.

Here is what every parent needs to know is on the PAARC for fourth grade.

On the Spring 2016 . . . [Common Core Test], students were expected to read an excerpt from [material] at a 7th Grade reading level. The Lexile measure is 1020L, which is most often found in texts that are written for middle school, and according to Scholastic’s own conversion chart would be equivalent to a 6th grade benchmark around W, X, or Y using the Fountas and Pinnell scale.

However Common Core standards dictate a student should be at level S on this scale by the end of 4th Grade.  The reading material on this test is therefore two grades advanced of the level of stressed teaching recommend even by Common Core. 

Since by Common Core itself, the Lexile measure of 1020 is for grades 6-8….. so why is the . . .[corporation in charge] putting this in a test to be taken by 9 year olds?

Right out of the gate, 4th graders are being asked to read and respond to texts that are two grade levels above the recommended benchmark. (Which, duh, is why we are telling every single parent to opt out of this test!!! )

“After they struggle through difficult texts with advanced vocabulary and nuanced sentence structures, they then have to answer multiple choice questions that are, by design, intended to distract students with answers all of which appear to be correct except for some technicality.”

Finally students combine a series of these two-year advanced texts, and write an essay based on prompts.  The ELA portion of the PARCC takes three days, and each day includes a new essay prompt based on multiple texts….

[In some questions, students were clearly asked to do more than is asked for in the standards, which are too demanding to begin with.]


Common Core standard RL.4.5: “Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.”

Nowhere does it say children should be comparing the structural elements between a passage and poem.  This is something most all adults would fail as well, since the entire ELA lexicon has changed since they were in school. Structures have completely different names now.

So why is . . . this in the PAARC for fourth graders, age 9 years?

The answer:  to drive scores lower so they can sell book on how to improve your child’s score.

The entire enterprise of analyzing text structures, called the New Criticism, is a literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century, and has since been left there.  So why are we making children perform what professors forced on their college students in 1950? . . .

Hillary Wants to Experiment with the Lives of Poor Children

Sequester "poor" children in boarding schools?...Again?

by Daun Kauffman @ Lucid Witness 

Native American students at the boarding school Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pa. in 1884.

Hillary Clinton spoke briefly, about a week ago, on a wide range of educational topics with Newsday editors on Long Island. The detailed, public video and transcript are posted HERE.

(The “Education” portion of the Newsday video runs from minute 40:40 to minute 51:15).

Clinton claimed to support “National Standards” in education and a “Common Core”. She supports “Public Charter Schools” and a litany of “good” things: “Good” teachers, ”Good” schools, “Good” Charters, “Good” choice, “Good” testing, “Good” explanation (to parents) of “standardized testing”.  Never once did she define “good”, although she used the terms “good” or “great” at least ten times during the eleven minute segment on education.

She did not speak to the structural inequity (nor the instability) of “National Standards” or a “Common Core” with no “National”, or “Common”, funding.

The most shocking aspect of her views on public education was her thought about improving education for “poor kids”, whom she had earlier acknowledged are now a majority in public schools.  The “poor” majority of children are described HERE as about 70% Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native American and Multiethnic.   Clinton describes “poor” children as coming to school with “all kinds of issues and problems”, her deficit view.  Then she cites the “need” to “experiment” on “poor” kids.
Clinton’s experiment will be “boarding schools”:  Segregate “poor” children in boarding schools, “if we can do it right”.

Click here to read the entire article.

Where is Hillary on Common Core and Charter Schools?

A clip from Ed Week (my bolds):

4. Hillary Clinton is pro-Common Core. At her first official campaign stop in Iowa, Clinton praised Common Core and called parents who misunderstand the value of the controversial academics "unfortunate." She also inserted the idea that education is a "non-family" entity in the U.S., and an important one. For what it's worth, I agree with Clinton. I've seen too many parents argue against Common Core because it is different from what they did as kids -- but isn't that the point? The U.S. lags behind other developed countries, particularly when it comes to STEM topics, so we should be taking a different approach when it comes to these topics. While her "non-family" comment may appear harsh to some, I think it's good that Clinton is taking a confident approach early on and not softening her platform.

5. Hillary Clinton likes charter schools. As far back as when her husband was in the position she now seeks, Hillary Clinton has been a supporter of quality charter schools in the U.S. During Bill Clinton's time in office, charter schools grew from 2,000 to 5,800 nationwide and he was quoted as saying he wished there was "10,000" that were available to the nation's youth. Hillary Clinton has already mentioned that she also supports pubic charter schools -- an issue that she coincidentally aligns her beliefs with Jeb Bush. Expect more rhetoric from her about how quality charter schools lead to more opportunities to at-risk American students.

"We are an army!"

Have a listen to Michelle R. Michelle at the Common Core session in Syracuse, NY on 11/10/15. 

You won't regret the 4 minutes spent!

Common Core and the Incredible Shrinking Imagination

by Jim Horn
One of the many technocratic mandates of the Common Core Standards comes in the form of an insistent rationing of the kinds and amounts of reading materials that schoolchildren should be exposed to at different grade levels.   

Below is the breakdown from the Common Core website.  Notice that as children get older, they are to get less and less reading in the form of imaginative literature.  

Those who argue that there are connections between the kinds of reading material that children are allowed and encouraged to ingest and the direction and scope of their ethical and intellectual growth, and I count myself in this group, have looked askance at the mandated percentages of literature vs "informational text." 

We are extremely skeptical of David Coleman's rationing of literary works as adolescents get just old enough to appreciate the great poetry, drama, and fiction that our civilizations, past and present, have produced.

Notice just above in the last two lines of the quote from the Common Core web page that Coleman and his tiny cadre of technocrats blame NAEP for this rationing of imaginative literature in the higher grades, as "to measure students' growth toward college and career readiness, assessments aligned with the Standards should adhere to the distribution of texts across grades cited in the NAEP framework."

After all, isn't it all about alignment with NAEP expectations, which, by the way, have been decidedly set at unrealistic levels for a long time, for the sole purpose solely of making public schools look worse they are.

The only problem with this "follow NAEP" rationale is that the NAEP reading framework was changed in 2009 to "adhere" to the demands of Bill Gates and his Common Core assault, which was paying Coleman and his tiny band of non-educators to come up with a national curriculum that would better align with multinational corporate needs for a never-ending stream of faceless and soulless technocrats who just as soon read a McKinsey employee manual as Madame Bovary:

Most interesting, too, is the fact that Susan Pimentel, who functioned as David Coleman's right hand during the writing of Common Core, was sitting on the NAEP Governing Board at the same time the NAEP reading framework was changed to fit the Gates agenda!  Small world, isn't it?

PARCC Sets Common Core Cut Scores But Won't Tell Anyone What They Are

Here's just one more reason why the fetid Common Core is doomed to the dustbin of bad ideas and implementation.  The shroud of secrecy, manipulation, and arrogant imposition continues, even though David Coleman has left with his collection of Armani suits for a throne at the College Board:

From Ed Week:

....PARCC spokesman David Connerty-Marin would say only that states are still finalizing their data, so it's too early to disclose how students performed on the test, which was given for the first time this past spring.

He didn't say why PARCC wouldn't release the actual cut scores, and testing experts were baffled by that as well. Several psychometricians we consulted said they had no idea why PARCC couldn't disclose the scores that students would need to meet to reach each performance level on the test.

"Cut points on the reporting scale ought to be something they're willing to let go of," said one assessment expert who's very familiar with PARCC's work to establish cut scores. "I can't understand why they wouldn't do that."....

TNReady = Common Core = More Failure

The Tennessee Department of Education continues its Huffman-esque tradition of making up its own facts and handing them off to the Tennessean, where clueless interns and corporate reporters copy and paste them up as news stories.  

A couple of weeks ago the big propaganda piece was posted at the Department's website with this lie as a headline: "Tennessee Students Hit Five Year High on ACT."  The Tennessean loyally followed the press release, rather than checking the ACT website (links here), which clearly showed the State was making it up.

The Times-Free Press did check the ACT website and got it right, and the Memphis Corporate Commercial Appeal plastered up Chalkbeat's story, which also printed the State's misinformation (see comment following story).

This morning the Tennessean's chief corporate education reporter from neighboring ultra-white Williamson County was pumping the State's "progress" on getting schools ready (buying PCs and networking infrastructure) to take next year's Common Core tests, which bear the new label, TNReady.

Indeed, it would be impressive if Tennessee were 90% ready for the online testing, as the state's media arm reports.  A school system is deemed ready by the state, however, if it has one station for every six students, regardless of age or condition.

The state is planning its first dry run this fall, with a system "stress test."  The real stress test will come next spring, and we will see how our smallest and most precious biological systems hold up.  Expect huge failure rates and more clamoring for accelerating the segregating charter privatization agenda.

Rick Hess Recants Common Core...or does he?

By Ken Derstine @ Defend Public Education!

July 29, 2015 

Rick Hess, the resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the right-wing American Policy Institute, has an article in the Fall 2014 issue of National Affairs: “How the Common Core Went Wrong”. It has come to light because Diane Ravitch featured it in a post on her blog on July 28, 2015: Rick Hess: How the Common Core Went Wrong

This blogger has previously written about Rick Hess on June 22, 2015: Frederick Hess: Duplicity Personified

To have a supporter of corporate education reform like Rick Hess say, “At this point, however reasonable the rationale for the Common Core, it seems increasingly clear that American education would be better off if this unfortunate, quasi-national enterprise had never made it off the drawing board.” is quite amazing. To acknowledge that its implementation has been a “stealth strategy that bypassed a distracted public” is also quite amazing.

Hess gives a very good chronicle of what is wrong with Common Core. However, his main concern seems to be with how it was implemented saying it allowed critics on the right to label it “Obamacore”.

With Hess’ claim to be facing reality however, he never acknowledges that Common Core is part of the goal of corporate and financial interests to privatize public education. In his long article he never even mentions public education. He mentions charter schools as being hurt by Common Core saying:

Along the way, the Common Core has driven a wedge between education-reform allies. In recent years, left-leaning groups like Democrats for Education Reform worked closely with Republican governors on issues like charter schooling, teacher evaluation, digital learning, and much else. Such partnerships are increasingly unlikely as anti-Common Core sentiment pulls Republican officials toward their base and away from compromise on education.

To say Democrats for Education Reform is “left-leaning” is laughable disinformation. It is a neoliberal organization that is totally on board with privatizing public education through charters. They, along with the heads of the two teachers unions and a dozen old guard civil right organizations, are running interference for the Gates Foundation agenda in the current Congressional Conference Committee on the ESEA rewrite. They want a doubling down of the use of standardized testing for teacher and school evaluations. (On July 7^th, almost two hundred civil rights and community organization have expressed opposition to standardized testing and expansion of charter schools in a letter to the Senate hearings on the ESEA rewrite.

Rick Hess wants to end Common Core’s federal role in education by raising the issue of states rights. States rights has a dark history in the U.S. beginning with the “Three-Fifths Compromise” which allowed slavery to continue in the U.S. as an issue of states rights until the Civil War. At the same time, this allowed the slavocracy to dominate American politics for a century.

The current promotion of states rights by Republicans in the Conference Committee is a grave danger to American education. It would make a smorgasbord of American education with fifty different state standards, including state versions of Common Core, and empower corporate education reform at the state level. Millions more would be spent on lobbying for it with even more intensity than now exists.

Incredibly, in his long essay, not once does Rick Hess mention teachers. Teachers are the biggest obstacles to the imposition of the corporate agenda. The voices of millions of critically thinking and questioning educators are seen as a threat rather than an asset by corporate reformers. Whether from the federal government or the states, Rick Hess, by his silence, is on board with those who vilify teachers as being the problem in education.

The current Congressional Conference Committee hearings are a grave danger to public education, whether it is the states rights agenda of the Republicans or the neoliberal agenda of the Democrats. Educators at all levels, whether K-12 or in the universities must pay attention to what is being proposed. We are going to be fighting this battle for years to come. It is only organizing from the grassroots that we are going to get a public school system that reflects the will of the people, not the will of corporate and financial interests.

Also see:

Talking to the Choir: AEI panels discuss their attack on public education
Defend Public Education! – April 2, 2015

Karen Lewis Speaks at FairTest Event June 4 2015

Gates Manufactures Another Astroturf Common Core Group in NY

The only remaining supporters of the Rotted Core are those who stand to profit in some way from the continuation of the manufactured failure of public education and the denial that poverty is a factor in student learning. 

The 80 billion dollar geek's latest gift to New York.  Story here:

. . . in reaction to the growing movement to opt students out of Common Core-based state tests and ramped-up campaigns by parent groups and teachers unions across the state, High Achievement New York is building its own countercoalition.

The group has been building a network of support from teachers, parents, administrators, education reform advocacy groups, businesses and community groups since it came into being a year ago. The group has the resources to do it, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – the primary foundation responsible for financing and promoting the Common Core – as well as the Helmsley Charitable Trust, and Robin Hood, a New York City anti-poverty organization.

In a meeting with Buffalo News editors and reporters Monday, representatives with High Achievement New York were accompanied by members of education reform group America Achieves, the Buffalo Urban League and the superintendent of Randolph Central Schools in Cattaraugus County.

Their main mission to is make the broader public aware that the Common Core is about more than just a test, they said. It’s about creating a new way of thinking and learning. Aside from wanting to counter what they consider bad information being espoused by anti-Common Core groups, they also say too few educators are taking advantage of everything the learning standards have to offer.

Randolph Superintendent Kimberly Moritz, for instance, said district leaders and principals need to be able to analyze and maximize the use of the Common Core testing data they receive, to help their teachers do the same. While some teachers complain that the Common Core testing information they receive isn’t transparent or useful, Moritz said the reality is that some teachers aren’t given the tools they need to examine the data in practical and meaningful ways.

A Desperate Christie Dumps Common Core in NJ

New York Community Considers Ditching All 3-8 Common Core Tests

Supt. Lubelfeld Admits that Your Children Are Common Core PARCC Guinea Pigs

When Bill Gates and Achieve, Inc. hired the patronizing Armani-clad little fascist, David Coleman, to rewrite American school standards and content, they forgot one important consideration:  what if their blitzkrieg succeeds and they rush into all the schools with their new computerized tests, only to find that the students refuse to participate in their unethical and dehumanizing child experimentation.  

Well, guess what--that is exactly what is happening, as the throngs of test refusers of conscience grow daily.  All across the county, the think tanks are churning, in search of the most effective ways to intimidate teachers, parents, and kids into backing down from what rationality and compassion demand.

District 109's superintendent has admitted the untried, unproven, and experimental nature of the PARCC treatment in a video that tries to intimidate teachers and parents into doing what they know is not in the best interest of children or their schools.

"After this year, and even more so over the next two years, we will see if the PARCC proves out," Lubelfeld said in the video. "If PARCC is not a useful assessment, District 109 leaders will be among the first to speak out and use our resources to lobby legislators for change.

"Meantime, there is no other way to determine the value of PARCC testing other than for schools to give the test and for students to give their best effort when taking the test," he continued.

Thousands of NJ Students Say "Out the Door with Common Core"

   

Students Walk Out on Common Core in New Mexico

The way to end the testing madness?  Don't participate!  Refuse the test! 

Out the door with Common Core.

From New Mexico:

Hundreds of students protesting a Common Core-oriented standardized test walked out of high schools across New Mexico on Monday.

The students, many carrying signs that read, "More teaching, less testing" and "Out the door with Common Core," ignored warnings from administrators who said they could face disciplinary measures and would not graduate if they continued the walkout.

Julie Guevara, a 16-year-old student in Albuquerque said students were tired of the constant testing and believed it was undermining their overall education.
Special: The One Thing You Should Do for Your Prostate Every Morning
"We hope the governor hears us and does something about this," she said. "We're not going away."

The office of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, a Common Core supporter, did not respond right away to a request for comment, the Associated Press reported.

The walkouts and demonstrations against Common Core started last week in Santa Fe, and students from several schools in Las Cruces also joined the movement by walking out of class on Monday. They were organized by a left-of-center group called ProgressNow/NM.

The largest demonstration was one at Albuquerque High School, where several hundred of its 1,800 students walked out, the Daily Caller reported.

The students are supposed to be taking the first day of standardized tests created by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

PARCC is a consortium of 11 states and the District of Columbia that have banded together to offer similar tests all designed to adhere to Common Core.

Support for PARCC appears to be slipping. At its peak, the Daily Caller added, "23 states containing more than half the country’s population were a part of PARCC; now, more than half have pulled out."

Across the country, opposition to Common Core and its testing regime is growing. . . .

Using Common Core to Dumb Down College to Benefit Student Loan Predators

The New York Times had a "news story" yesterday that attempts to downplay the effects of the growing Opt Out movement on the survival chances of the fetid Common Core.  According to the Times, the Gates and Lumina Foundations don't have much to worry about from a bunch of disorganized and hot-headed parents who will, in the end, send their children to school to be hammered with the new failure production system known as Common Core.  We'll see.

The big underreported story of the Common Core debacle involves the corrupt Lumina Foundation's influence in helping to assure that the Core is used to shape state college undergraduate education along the Core's dumbed-down contours.  Most people, even university people, don't realize that in states adopting the Core, state colleges and universities are compelled to use the 11th grade CC test results as the only indicator of readiness for college.  In other words, state institutions of higher ed can only place students in credit bearing courses if they have passing Common Core test scores.  If students pass the test, they must be placed into credit-bearing courses.

Why is this important?  With increasing numbers of the present generation of high school completers having learned how to memorize, cheat, and bubble in test forms rather than how to think and to write, remediation in college has become more and more critical to bringing kids up to speed for college learning.  When another 11th grade Pearson test (Common Core) is to be used to determine college readiness for state schools, you can bet that college courses will necessarily be dumbed down to fit the lack of preparedness that will surely continue as long as testing continues to displace teaching and learning in high school, even as the thumb screws are tightened on K-12 teachers. 

The likely outcome of this dumbing down of undergraduate education in state schools will be a clearer demarcation within the college caste system that will offer one knowledge set to the kids at the Harvards and the Dukes, a lesser one for the kids going to state colleges, and a bottom one for those untouchable kids who can attend only the online diploma mill schools.

Meanwhile, the predators who provided the money to create the Lumina Foundation to begin with will get fatter and fatter from preying on more kids who are less prepared for real college work and who will come out of their undergraduate experiences with less knowledge and plenty of debt to make them permanently indentured to corporate America.  The student loan bubble will grow and grow until another economic meltdown allows the banksters to walk away once more with most of the country's assets. 

So you see killing the Core is even more important than many have so far realized.  University people need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Inside Higher Ed has a nuanced and somewhat-detailed article that I highly recommend.  Here is clip:

. . . .More than 800 colleges and universities, most of them public institutions, have already agreed to use the results of [Common Core] assessments for placement purposes. (Getting state colleges on board with college- and career-ready standards was a requirement for states seeking waivers for No Child Left Behind.)

“The practical result is going to be something like this,” says Hammang, of AASCU. “If you’ve taken the assessment and you are deemed college-ready in math or English, you don’t get put into a developmental class. You get put in a credit-bearing class and go from there.”

Colleges have agreed only to make the assessments one factor that they consider, and Smarter Balanced argues that institutions should take high school grades and other factors into account. “We know this is a high-stakes thing for kids in the 11th grade,” King says. “It’s not appropriate to make high-stakes decisions based exclusively on an assessment.”

But that’s what many colleges do now through Compass and Accuplacer. And there will be “tremendous political pressure” within states for colleges to rely on the new Common Core assessments instead when possible, Hammang says.

Whether the results match up -- whether students who score as “college-ready” on assessments are considered to be well-prepared once they actually enter college -- will be a stress test for the effectiveness of the Common Core. If colleges have reasons to doubt that standards are truly at college level, the trust between K-12 and higher education on which the entire initiative rests could easily erode.

“We’ve gone to all this trouble and expense,” Hammang says. “They should mean something when a student shows up at your door.”

The Other PARCC

No Excuses New Jersey, It's Time to Pass Opt Out Legislation

Save Our Schools New Jersey has made it so easy to contact your state reps to pass legislation that would protect students and give parents the right to opt their children out of high stakes testing.

No excuses. If parents, teachers and students don't click on the link below, then they deserve what they get. How much easier can it be, and it's another snow day.

No excuses!!

Support A4165: Protect Right to Refuse High-Stakes Standardized Tests

Please enter your zip code below to ask your New Jersey Assembly Members to support A4165. 

This bipartisan legislation guarantees all families the right to refuse high-stakes standardized tests, without retribution.

You may personalize the subject line and edit the email to your Assembly Members. Sharing your family's experiences with high-stakes standardized testing is particularly helpful in informing legislators about this issue. 

Please also call your two Assembly Members and ask them to support A4165. You may leave a message on their voicemail.  You can find their contact information by looking up your home town at this link

It only takes a minute to call and send an email and has a significant impact on your Assembly Members' willingness to support this legislation. 

We anticipate that A4165 will be heard in the Assembly Education Committee very soon. 

Please check our Facebook page for daily updates and our website for our position statement on high-stakes standardized testing.  Our website also contains additional information about the PARCC high-stakes standardized tests; answers to frequently-asked questions about refusing high-stakes standardized testing; and useful forms for parents who wish to refuse such tests for their children.     

Thank you for all you do to support high-quality public education for all of our children!

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