Edublogger Grant Wiggins writes Failure: the 8th grade NYS Common Core Math Test | Granted, and...
I'm not sure how far I'd go with this; I basically think that the idea of "high stakes testing" is fundamentally flawed, that it necessarily distorts teaching by forcing an overemphasis on the parts of learning that are amenable to whatever tests you can design. I doubt that his demand for greater transparency and better-written tests would help a lot with my concerns. Still, he's an actual teacher...
As I have often written here, the Common Core Standards are just common sense – but that the devil is in the details of implementation. And in light of the unfortunate excessive secrecy surrounding the test items and their months-later analysis, educators are in the unfortunate and absurd position of having to guess what the opaque results mean for instruction. It might be amusing if there weren’t personal high stakes of teacher accountability attached to the results.
So, using the sample of released items in the NY tests, I spent some time this weekend looking over the 8th grade math results and items to see what was to be learned – and I came away appalled at what I found.
I'm not sure how far I'd go with this; I basically think that the idea of "high stakes testing" is fundamentally flawed, that it necessarily distorts teaching by forcing an overemphasis on the parts of learning that are amenable to whatever tests you can design. I doubt that his demand for greater transparency and better-written tests would help a lot with my concerns. Still, he's an actual teacher...
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