The Republican City Committee looking to reverse state wide adoption of the 2010 Common Core state education standards.
Good idea or bad idea?
Newton GOP collecting signatures to reverse Common Core
by Village 14 | Oct 14, 2015 | Newton | 14 comments
“Good idea or bad idea?” I’d say it’s a neutral idea, because it would exchange Common Core for MCAS.
The “good” idea for Newton would be to ditch curriculums that are driven by standardized testing, and design a curriculum that is uniquely our own, personalized for each student.
There is a reason Newton schools are no longer among the best public schools in the country. Standardized testing is part of the problem. In an era when we should be encouraging creativity and teaching kids to think outside-the-box, our school system shoves them all into the same box.
Standardized testing may work well for historically underperforming school systems. But when testing dictates curriculum, it pulls the great school systems toward the middle of the pack. Today, Newton parents seem quite content when our schools rank in the top 20% state wide. Most of them don’t realize that represents a long steady decline.
@Mike, Common Core is a set of standards and MCAS is an exam. The Massachusetts curriculum frameworks are aligned to the Common Core and school districts across the Commonwealth have spent millions of dollars aligning and purchasing new materials.
In a society where making a living wage is dependent on having a good education, we can ill afford to have schools that are not at least teaching to the minimum – that is what the standard represents. We already know that there are achievement gaps for lower income children and children of color – everywhere including Newton. The standards and the tests hold our feet to the fire and ensure that we set high standards for all and are held accountable for meeting those standards.
Was an early advocate for MCAS, especially as yardstick to determine if teachers were fulfilling their end of their contract, both written, financial and organic.
Three years into its implementation and I despised it. I actually had a middle-school history teacher (who proudly was to the Left of Bernie Sanders) lament to me that because she had to teach to the test, she was unable to spend more time on the American Revolution.
I’m all for high standards. When I briefly taught, (oftentimes to low-income, mixed race children) I found that setting a pace and standard slightly above their heads and particular age group encouraged them to try harder to reach the goals of the class.
But in my experience, neither MCAS and especially CC allow for much flexibility in reaching even base standards. Nothing I’ve ever read about CC or any of the propaganda on-line videos CC has produced has convinced me otherwise. My neighbor Mike is correct – instead of lifting the bottom tiers UPWARDS, it drags everyone to a mediocre middle.
I too was a supporter of having standards that if states adopted them would raise the bar on what all students knew when they left high school. I checked out the existing standards in most states which showed me that California and Massachusetts had the highest standards and achievement so I was pleased that the Common Core Standards were using their’s as a starting point. I was skeptical of the board who wrote the standards but thought Gates is a smart guy and has the money to fund it so maybe this is only way to get them done. It surely wasn’t going to be funded by the slash education funding legislature.
Then, with Arne Duncan’s questionable leadership, the standards were submitted to the states without any knowledge that they would accomplish anything because they didn’t test them in a real worked setting.
I realized that they wrote the standards, which sound a bit like our old zoning law, and then turned them over to a conglomerate to decipher them, decide what it would take to accomplish them at each grade level, write the tests that would make that determination and the curriculum that would achieve those standards. Just like that. Well, that just created a huge mess. The test required computers which certainly doesn’t help low achieving student in lower income areas and Gates didn’t provide the computers did he? The manner in which the test is required of student in SPED lowers their achievement on the test. The failures go on and on.
The test was a complete flop in NY, where it was first tested, and has led to the opt-out movement. The questions are all over social media and websites showing how ridiculously they are worded. The test is administered annually which means less class time for students and that the curriculum leaves no time to teach other material in the off years so the students are only taught to master the test, which partly teaches them how to make sense of the questions.
Now it seems that since Coomon Core Standards are tied to the new tests and curriculums, the only way to improve this situation is either to join the opt-out movement, BAD, or abolish the entire program.
Is this a local petition or the one that is circulating statewide? I’m assuming it is the one many groups are advocating state wide.
If it is local is there a way to read the petition and sign it on line or is it just at the Harvest Festival.
The Common Core standards have been in place in Massachusetts since 2010. They are not tied to any tests. There are new tests available and the decision as to how we assess that standards are being met is the decision of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. They will make that decision next month.
Massachusetts has had a standards based education system since the 1993 Education Reform law was passed. The standards have been revised several times. Testing has been in place since 1998 and that too has been revised several times.
The poor quality of the Parcc test is a greater issue than the standards which I find to be quite reasonable. The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) plans to vote in November on whether to use the Parcc test which was developed by a $2 billion (yes, that’s a B – standardized testing is big business) corporation (Pearson).
I was listing opting out of the PARCC test as an option; one I support. The common Oore Standards are very much like the previous MA standards. It’s the test associated with it, PARCC, that isn’t fulfilling its purpose, is being used unwisely and is given annually.
Marti, the PARCC is given in the same way that MCAS was – in grades, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. In Newton we opted to have the science MCAS that is required for graduation taken in grade 9.
In states like New York, this may be new. In Massachusetts we’ve been testing in these grades every year since 1998.
PARCC is a different kind of test. It is asking less for students to show they know information and asking instead if students know how to apply what they have learned. It is also meant to be taken online and not with paper and pencil.
The question before the board of elementary and secondary education is does Massachusetts use PARCC, created and controlled by a consortium of states or do we go back to creating our own assessment – the MCAS. If the board decides to stick with MCAS it will look very different from the MCAS of the past as it will also be a measure that tries to get at whether or not our students can apply the information they have learned.
The fundamental question is about whether we control the test instrument or not. It will still be an annual exam in grades 3 through 10 with a 10th grade passing grade needed for graduation.
What Margaret said. The Parcc consortium began with 24 states buying in but over several years, many states have dropped out and it’s now down to 11 states.
A computer based test puts students who don’t have internet access at home at a significant disadvantage. We need a test that provides a level playing field for all students.
AFAIK, the initial iteration of PARCC also called for two testing periods in the spring, presumably to measure “growth”, but the testing periods were something like 6-8 weeks apart. My understanding is that has been scrapped – is that true?
Yes. But we still don’t know what the testing regimen is going forward as the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will not vote until November.
I thought that the use of computers was being dropped from the PARCC.
Marti, I hadn’t heard that. I have heard, however that it is quite likely that any test that might replace the PARCC will also be taken on computers.
The Common Core, Mass Curriculum Frameworks before it, the MCAS, and the PARCC exam are all causing us to “race to the middle.” We used to be educational leaders, and encourage innovation in our classrooms – now, we have become a bureaucratic morass – spending millions to “align” our curriculum, and losing things that we used to do well (e.g, science fairs). We are driving out some of our best teachers, and replacing them with younger, less experienced ones, who are pliant about teaching to the test and the script. All I can say is that my kids had the advantage of going through a school system that was largely unchanged education “reform.” If I had school age kids today, I’d move to a system that took the approach of “our kids score fine on the tests, we’ll keep teaching things our way,” or invest in private schooling.