Education Week - May 20, 2015 - 8

BLOGS www.edweek.org/go/blogs
'Why State Test Results
Don't Tell the Real Story'
| CURRICULUM MATTERS | It's been five years since states
began adopting the common core. But many faces have
changed since then in the big chairs occupied by the
governors, state commissioners, and state board members
who gave it the green light. That's why two Washingtonbased
groups think it's time for a refresher course.
The name of the course could be "Why State Test
Results Don't Tell the Real Story," or more bluntly, "State
Tests Lie." Backers of the Common Core State Standards
have been trying to get this message across for years,
using the proficiency gaps between naep and states' scores
on their own tests as Exhibit A.
Last week, those advocates released a report showing
how most states produce much higher proficiency rates on
their own tests than they do on the federally sponsored
National Assessment of Educational Progress. The
report was issued by Achieve, which had a central role in
organizing the initiative to write the common core, and the
Collaborative for Student Success, a foundation-funded
group that works to expand support for the standards.
The report separates states into categories according to
the size of their gaps: "truth-tellers" have tests that produce
proficiency rates closer to naep, and "biggest gaps" ... well,
that speaks for itself.
Here is an example of what Achieve and the collaborative
call "the honesty gap." In 4th grade reading, Georgia
has the biggest gap: a 60-point differential between the
proficiency rates its own tests reported in 2013-14 and
those that naep reported that year. New York has the
narrowest differential, with only a 5-point gap.
More than half the states have proficiency gaps of 30
points or more, the report says.
The states named as the "biggest truth-tellers" are those
that have "the political courage" to rework their standards
and tests to ensure that students are expected to master
material that truly prepares them for college and good jobs,
according to a statement by Karen Nussle, the executive
director of the collaborative.
There have been many reports about how states set the
bar low on their tests-lower than naep "basic" levels,
in most cases-and that they did so, in many cases, to
escape sanctions for low achievement that were written
into the No Child Left Behind Act. So in a way, although
the comparisons in the new report use more recent testproficiency
rates, they revisit well-trod turf.
But timing is everything. And with so many new
state policymakers-all of whom could undermine the
standards or their accompanying tests-common-core
backers appear to be trying to persuade them that the
better part of "political courage" is keeping standards,
and cutoff scores, high.
Gates Foundation Launches
Website for Ed-Tech Ventures
| MARKETPLACE K-12 | The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
has launched Teachers Know Best, a website for companies
that want to know what educators want in digital resources.
The site consolidates research the foundation has
conducted with 3,000 teachers and 1,200 students,
organizing it by subjects like "opportunities," "product
preferences," and "reports."
More than 500 digital resources are listed, with
information about what the product does, its ranking in
the survey, the most frequently identified student benefit,
according to teachers, and what students identified most
often about the product's benefit to them.
The four most important gaps in current product
offerings, according to the foundation's research, are
elementary language arts, middle school social studies,
high school math, and all levels of science.
(Education Week receives grant funding from the
foundation to support coverage of implementation of
college- and career-ready standards.)
Award-Winning Principal to Quit;
Cites New Teacher Evaluations
| TEACHING NOW | Carol Burris, a nationally recognized
principal and a vocal opponent of the Common Core
State Standards, has announced that she will resign
from her position after this school year, citing test-heavy
teacher-evaluation processes as a key reason for her
departure.
Burris, the principal of South Side High School in
-CATHERINE GEWERTZ & HOLLY PEELE
Rockville Centre, N.Y., has been recognized by several
state and national associations and was named the New
York high school principal of the year in 2013. Known as a
proponent of a rigorous curriculum, she's drawn attention
for mandating that nearly all students in her school take
advanced classes.
In explaining her decision to resign, Burris said she was
morally opposed to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to
make student test scores count for as much as 50 percent
of teachers' evaluation ratings.
"I did not feel, in good conscience, that I could come
back the following year and participate in that evaluation
system," she said, according to a Newsday report.
Provisions to create a more rigorous evaluation system
were included in New York state's recently passed
budget legislation. While Cuomo had originally proposed
making student performance count for half of a teacher's
evaluation, the details of the new system have yet to be
fleshed out, though test scores are expected to be a central
component.
-MICHELE MOLNAR
Once a supporter of the common core, and even a coauthor
of a book on working with the standards in schools,
Burris has become an oft-cited critic of the framework,
arguing that it is unclear, untested, and overly complicated.
Though she is leaving her school position, Burris is not
expected to retire from the K-12 scene. She said she plans to
devote more of her time to fighting the changes she sees as
harmful to education, including the standards and the new
teacher-evaluation system.
-JORDAN MOENY
EXTRA! EXTRA!
NEED EXTRA COPIES OF
QUALITY COUNTS 2015?
ORDER MORE
ONLINE: www.edweek.org/go/buyQC
TOLL-FREE:1-800-445-8250
Order the digital edition for immediate download:
www.edweek.org/go/buyQCdigital
Back issues of prior years are also available.
8 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 20, 2015 | www.edweek.org
http://www.edweek.org/go/blogs http://www.edweek.org/go/buyQC http://www.edweek.org/go/buyQC http://www.edweek.org/go/buyQCdigital http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - May 20, 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 20, 2015
