Carol Burris, award-winning principal of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District, and John Murphy provide us with a sobering analysis of the new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
Originally posted by Valarie Strauss of the Washington Post:
By Carol Burris and John Murphy
Congratulations to the New York State Education Department. Officials there have solved the college remediation problem. Their Common Core graduation tests are so “rigorous” and have a new passing score (for students graduating in 2022) set so high that only about 1 in 4 students will graduate high school. And the elite 25 percent who make it won’t be going to community college, so the colleges with highest remediation rates can close.
On what basis do we make such a claim? As Brooklyn principal, Liz Phillips, said in The New York Times, “We need to talk about the tests.” Unlike the grades 3-8 tests, which are hidden from the public eye, the new Common Core high school tests can be seen—including the “passing scores” that will determine graduation, both now and in the future. Let’s take a look at the tests, as well as the cut scores, in order to better understand the continuing march of New York’s reformist lemmings right over the cliff of reason…
