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    indigo Offline OP
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    Originally Posted by cricket3
    Regarding assessment, they are absolutely separate things.
    When the common core official website indicates that common core standards were reviewed and found to be a solid basis for development of standards-based assessments, in what way do you find the standardized testing to be unrelated to common core standards? Where do you get your information from?

    Do you find evidence in the text of the official common core website which indicates that...
    1) the creation of standards-based assessments was not anticipated and planned for when common core standards were developed?
    2) the creation of standards-based assessments is beyond the intended uses/purposes of the common core standards?
    3) the common core standards developers decry the administration of standards-based assessments for students?


    By contrast, this post upthread shows evidence from the text that...
    1) standards-based assessments were anticipated by the developers of common core standards,
    2) the standards were found to be a solid basis for developing the standards-based assessments,
    3) the availability and use of standards-based assessments as a measuring tool is a benefit.

    Without the development of the common core standards, the vast standards-based assessments would not exist. The development of the common core standards drove the development of the standards-based assessment tools; they are not unrelated.

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    Val Offline
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    The tests aren't tied to the Common Core because it's possible to throw out the tests without throwing out the standards.

    But the CC is politicized, which means that logical arguments are irrelevant.

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    indigo Offline OP
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    Originally Posted by Val
    The tests aren't tied to the Common Core because it's possible to throw out the tests without throwing out the standards.
    So we agree on opting out of the standardized testing! smile

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    Louisiana did a pilot PARCC test with about 50,000 students last year. No major technical glitches. Nearly 80% of students participating preferred the PARCC to the paper test it replaces (LEAP).

    I think this statement made the point about the PARCC opt-out movement quite eloquently:

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    "Logically speaking, none of this makes a bit of sense," the Council for a Better Louisiana said in a commentary piece Thursday. "This is really ... about Common Core standards. But refusing to take the test doesn't change the fact that we're still teaching to those standards. In fact, it means nothing except that we won't know whether those students actually learned what they were taught," CABL said.

    I recommend the entire editorial (the impacts on students with disabilities might be of special interest to some parents here), particularly since it's coming from a right-leaning state, whose governor has just anointed himself the champion of the anti-CC movement... and he's getting almost no support from his own state, having already been resoundingly rejected by his own education department and the right-dominated legislature.

    So, he's taking his argument to the people, asking parents to opt out. So far, the people are rejecting that call, too:

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    Louisiana is arguing over what to do if public school students refuse to take new Common Core tests, but so far the number of families opting out in New Orleans remains tiny: 1.

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    Originally Posted by Aufilia
    Moreoever, I don't think the CCSS require any particular impact on gifted education. They simply show what children should have learned BY the end of a grade; not what they must learn IN that grade. This situation is no different then before the CCSS, when most states already had their own standards but nobody ever heard about them on the news. Districts having chosen to claim the CCSS requires them to squelch gifted education on account of the CCSS are either acting in ignorance or because they have a new excuse to do what they wanted to do anyway.

    My son is in a Title 1 school and what we find is that the teachers are forced to spend so much time bringing the kids up to the reading/writing/math standards (for kindergarten!) that they simply don't have the time or energy to differentiate for the gifted kids.

    We've also run into the attitude that "DS has already met the standard, so he's fine." This attitude does not serve the gifted kids well. When the focus of a school is (or has to be) on achieving certain standards--as opposed to fostering the intellectual growth of all students--then I would guess that gifted students are likely to suffer the consequences.

    Now anecdotes are not data, and common core may not say anything specifically about gifted education, but school resources tend to be finite over the short term. When a school is forced to divert resources towards achieving a new goal, something will likely have to be cut back. And we seem to be seeing firsthand some effects of common core in a resource-limited school.

    (That doesn't mean the cutback is the fault of Common Core, but it does mean that somewhere, someone failed to develop an implementation plan that ensured the needs of all students would continue to be met.)

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    Originally Posted by indigo
    Without the development of the common core standards, the vast standards-based assessments would not exist.


    Right, but the part you're missing is that standards already existed before the common core. EVERY STATE already HAD standards. And most (maybe all) of them already had standardized tests supposedly based on their standards. There's nothing new about having standards or tests based on them. The only new thing here is that most states are now using the same standards instead of making up their own, and using the same tests instead of making up their own. ALL this stuff already existed before the Common Core hit the news. You already had "one size fits all" standards, except in some states they were low standards, and in some states they were high standards, and in every state they had different names and different tests. The common core standards aren't the problem.

    If you throw out common core, then what do you have? "[Your State Name Here] State Standards" instead. If you google that phrase, you'll be able to find the standards your state was previously using, back before politicians decided to start making politics about them.

    If you throw out the common core, you have 50 different sets of standards instead of 1 shared set. You have companies publishing 50 different sets of curriculum. You have 50 different standardized tests with 50 different names. You have some states that are winners with good standards, and some that are losers with poor standards. But standards and standard-based tests won't cease to exist. That just won't happen. It wasn't how things worked before the common core hit the news, and it isn't what will happen if politicians playing politics destroy it.

    Last edited by Aufilia; 03/07/15 12:09 AM.
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    indigo Offline OP
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    Many have said that the frequency and duration of standardized testing has increased, teaching to the test has increased. This becomes a kind of censorship as it fosters a belief that if it's not on the test students don't need to know it.

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    Originally Posted by indigo
    Many have said that the frequency and duration of standardized testing has increased, teaching to the test has increased. This becomes a kind of censorship as it fosters a belief that if it's not on the test students don't need to know it.

    I'd argue that this has more to do with the politics around teacher evaluations than common core standards. Many states have decided that they "need" to use standardized test results to evaluate schools and individual teachers, and have linked money and job security of teachers to the results of the tests. Politicians want to reduce student learning to neat little numbers, and standardized tests make that easy. Our state (Washington) is in trouble with the feds this year for NOT trying teacher evaluations to standardized testing. (
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/24/washington-no-child-left-_n_5207245.html)

    Last edited by Aufilia; 03/07/15 12:22 AM.
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    indigo Offline OP
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    Originally Posted by Aufilia
    ... reduce student learning to neat little numbers, and standardized tests make that easy.
    National standards make the proliferation of national standardized tests easy.

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    Originally Posted by indigo
    Originally Posted by Aufilia
    ... reduce student learning to neat little numbers, and standardized tests make that easy.
    National standards make the proliferation of national standardized tests easy.

    In what way are multi-state standardized tests worse than state-specific standardized tests?

    Last edited by Aufilia; 03/07/15 12:27 AM.
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