October 31, 2015
IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:
Rigging the Test Against Common Core (Editorial Board, 10/29/15)
Nationwide, students largely scored lower on the Common Core assessments than they had on the hodgepodge of state and national tests they took previously. But this isn't a bad thing. Far too many states and districts used to game their testing results to falsely indicate that students were thriving. In Georgia, for instance, the percentage of fourth graders deemed proficient in reading dropped from nearly 100 percent in 2013 to less than 40 percent in 2015. In New Jersey, the number of high school students passing in English dropped from 93 percent to 41 percent.The most reliable previous nationwide standard, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has long made clear just how poorly American schools serve children. In 2013, the NAEP indicated that just 26 percent of 12th graders were proficient in math, and 38 percent in reading. Yet many states obscured that reality with their own watered-down assessments. More than half reported state test results that were more than 30 percentage points higher than their NAEP scores.
Which is what Soccer Moms oppose--a universal standardized test that demonstrates how little their kids know. They love grade inflation.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 31, 2015 10:36 AM