Education Week - December 3, 2014 - 13

This year, "I'm not getting the
calls [from teachers] that say, 'I
need you to come out and help
me defend what I'm doing,' " said
Ms. Gennuso, of Lafayette Parish,
which started slowly implementing
the standards four years ago..
Ed Hughes, who attended the
Old Orchard Elementary parent
session here in Toledo, said that
while it's not the way he learned,
the addition and subtraction methods
"make sense."
"It's expanding [students'] overall
thinking, and showing there's
more than one way to do it," he
said. Based on what he's learned
about the standards over the past
couple of years, he said, "I think it's
definitely helped my son."
Ms. Bonds, his fellow Old Orchard
parent, said she wishes she'd
learned through common-core
methods herself.
"To me, it's still a little confusing,
but when they're breaking it down
in their heads, they're getting it a
lot faster than I can," she said of
her children.
whole issue," she said. "We did
have some angry parents, and
some parents just wanting to know
more-'Why are we changing?
Why is this different than when I
learned it?' "
Meanwhile, in the state's St.
Tammany Parish district, the
school board recently voted to
phase out Eureka Math, a curriculum
designed for the common core,
after hearing from some parents
and board members that the lessons
were too complicated.
Lynne Munson, the president
of the Washington-based publishing
company Common Core Inc.,
which developed Eureka, said the
St. Tammany action resulted from
"a vocal minority there who's politicizing
something that shouldn't
be politicized." The common core
has been the center of a heated
political battle in Louisiana-
Gov. Jindal originally supported
the standards but later came out
strongly against them, even filing
a lawsuit over them accusing
the federal government of intrusion,
while the state schools superintendent
has been a steadfast
proponent.
The "anti feeling" about the common
core tends to get played up in
the news media, said Alice J. Gill,
the senior associate director in the
educational issues department at
the American Federation of Teachers,
in Washington.
"I think that when parents are
exposed and included and have an
understanding of what this is," she
said of the initiative, "they're far
less upset than just not knowing."
Outreach Efforts
Schools and districts have taken
multipronged approaches to getting
the word out to parents about
how the common-core standards
will change math instruction.
The 1,500-student Upper Dublin
school district in Pennsylvania,
about 20 miles north of Philadelphia,
held family math nights at
each of its elementary schools last
year. About 700 parents attended
in total, said Janet Blenheim, the
math coach there.
The district also sent letters to
parents about common-core math,
acknowledging that "homework
might initially be stressful," and
produced a video describing the
curricular changes.
In Louisiana, the Lafayette Parish
district, which has 30,000 students,
has held parent nights and
posted detailed parent math guides
for each grade level on its website.
Teachers also send home one- to
two-page newsletters for each new
unit students are doing in math
class.
"We recognize that we need our
parents in order to be able to do
this," said Ms. Gennuso. "When you
have parents say, 'I can't help them,
but I want to and I have a college
degree,' we want to help them."
Outside organizations are trying
to help with such communication
efforts.
The Council of the Great City
Schools, a Washington-based
group that represents 67 big-city
districts, published parent "road
maps" to common-core math on its
website. The aft's ShareMyLesson,
the National pta, the Teaching
Channel, LearnZillion, and individual
curriculum providers have all
posted parent resources for learning
about the math standards online,
too.
A recent Gallup poll showed that
the more experience teachers have
had with the standards, the more
they tend to like them. In many
cases, the same pattern seems to
be playing out with parents, educators
said.
Ms. Briars of the Reston, Va.based
nctm, who has led math
workshops for parents, said parents
are "very receptive" when they
learn to do the math themselves.
The big question now is whether
the buy-in that districts have procured
will remain once testing
starts later this school year.
"I can't imagine that anybody
would disagree that we should have
standards that are rigorous and
preparing our students to go to college,"
Ms. Johnson of the Delaware
pta said. But the new assessments,
which many parents worry will be
stressful for students and teachers,
are "clouding things," she said. "We
need to keep the assessments separate
from the standards."
Coverage of the implementation of
college- and career-ready standards is
supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation.
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tracks news and trends on this issue.
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of the public to examine the difficulty
of test items online, and
2,600 did so.
In October, about 500 reviewers-mainly
classroom teachers,
principals, curriculum directors and
higher education faculty-gathered
in Dallas to study those descriptions
of achievement and to review booklets
of test items, arranged in order
of difficulty. In separate panels by
subject and grade level, they examined
the items and decided the points
that distinguished the four levels of
achievement.
After rounds of discussion, the
results were aggregated into cut
scores for each grade and subject.
The panelists considered
performance data from national
tests such as naep and the act
college-entrance exam for comparison
as well.
Sixty of the Dallas panelists later
reviewed the cut scores across
grades for consistency.
Drawing the Line
Yvonne Johnson, a parent and
pta leader from Delaware, served
on the 3rd grade math cut-scoresetting
panel. She said that in
early rounds, she was inclined to
set the cutoff points much lower
than those many of her fellow panelists
favored.
"We would be working on Level
2, and I'd want to set it on Page 7,
and everyone else was at, like, Page
25 and above," she said. "I thought,
'Wow, are these appropriate? This
is a very rigorous standard.' But
I learned that they're aiming for
something higher. I'm used to, '2
plus 2 is 4; you're right.' But here,
you'd want the student to explain
why he got that answer, to justify."
In the end, Ms. Johnson said, she
felt confident that the cut points
were set at the "appropriate" level,
with extended discussion, input, and
agreement from all panelists.
Many in the field of educational
measurement expressed concern,
though, about Smarter Balanced's
decision to set cut scores based only
on field-test data. More often, states
establish those scores after the operational
test is given, and that is
what parcc will do.
"It's really bizarre to set cut scores
based on field-test data," said one
state education department psychometrician.
"You can't possibly project"
accurately what proportions of
students will score at the four levels
of the test. He and other assessment
experts said that field-test data are
not good predictors of performance
on the operational test because students
are unfamiliar with the test,
and often, teachers have had less experience
teaching the material that's
being tested.
And students might lack motivation
to do their best on a field test,
experts said.
"The good news is that whatever
they're anticipating now [in studentproficiency
rates] will get better,"
one assessment expert said of the
Smarter Balanced approach.
The CURRICULUM MATTERS blog
tracks news and trends on this issue.
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EDUCATION WEEK | December 3, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 13
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"
It's not surprising
that fewer students
could score at Level
3 or higher.
However, over time
the performance
of students will
improve."
JOE WILHOFT
Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium
Photos by Brian Widdis for Education Week
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Education Week - December 3, 2014

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