PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them

[Anonymous]

If the CC standards and the related standardized testing do not show any real improvement in educational outcomes (as compared to NAEP, SAT, ACT and other measures), that will pretty much tell us what we need to know.

I'm pretty sure I know how that's going to turn out. Of course I know you will say that the failure of CC was because of "local problems".

And some people will have profited at the expense of students and society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If the CC standards and the related standardized testing do not show any real improvement in educational outcomes (as compared to NAEP, SAT, ACT and other measures), that will pretty much tell us what we need to know.

I'm pretty sure I know how that's going to turn out. Of course I know you will say that the failure of CC was because of "local problems".

And some people will have profited at the expense of students and society.

Which educational reform in the US is this not true of?

Also, the SAT and the ACT are not good outcome measures.

[Anonymous]

And some people will have profited at the expense of students and society.


Which educational reform in the US is this not true of?

Well, let's try to stop this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Expel kids?

Remember, these are KIDS, not adults we are talking about. Maybe they could be counseled to opt out of the PARCC.

If they're publishing the questions, that's a form of cheating, which is an offense worth expulsion.

Why on EARTH would they counseled to "opt out" of the PARCC? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. They have these tests for a very good reason.

That's right. So Pearson can make a profit, and politicians can suck up to ignorant constituents who don't understand what's happening. Expel those kids fast, before they manage to stand up for themselves.

[Anonymous]

Worse yet, you gave absolutely ludicrous examples of what you felt were acceleration - for example that for kids who can already count to 10, that it would take them an additional year and a half more to get from counting to 10 to counting to 20 and beyond.

Pretty sure no one on this thread said that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

However given existing historical data relating to the cost of developing standards, it's already known and documented fact that the costs of each state and district doing their own thing is vastly more expensive than the cost of developing and maintaining one standard.

Ah ha! There's the problem. The hypothesis is that higher standards will improve performance. Now, prove it.

Actually, the hypotheses are that the Common Core standards are

1. a disaster
2. a Pearson conspiracy
3. a Bill Gates conspiracy
4. "developmentally inappropriate"
5. un-American
6. a federal takeover
7. a straitjacket
8. made up out of thin air
9. something something standardized tests
10. dumbed-down (oh, whoops, that's only on the Maryland Public Schools forum)

Now, prove them -- please.

Prove they're not.

[Anonymous]

Worse yet, you gave absolutely ludicrous examples of what you felt were acceleration - for example that for kids who can already count to 10, that it would take them an additional year and a half more to get from counting to 10 to counting to 20 and beyond.

The reality is that Common Core is a more consistent, gap-filling and harmonized version of existing state standards. In fact, if you visit this very message board and listen to what they say even from neighboring Montgomery County you will find they consider Common Core to be cake, lower than what they had previously. California and a few other states had areas where parts of their state standard were higher than Common Core. And as "vague" as you think Common Core standards are, many of the prior state standards were far worse (and oh, by the way, the state standards have plenty of misspellings too). If you're going to trot around pretending to be an expert you might first at least take a look at some of the comparative analyses that were done. Again, in some cases the language that was used in Common Core came directly from state standards. They were not developed from scratch, in a vacuum. The status quo that you want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars through getting rid of Common Core and going back to is really not what you have it cracked up to be.

[Anonymous]

you might first at least take a look at some of the comparative analyses that were done. Again, in some cases the language that was used in Common Core came directly from state standards. They were not developed from scratch, in a vacuum. The status quo that you want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars through getting rid of Common Core and going back to is really not what you have it cracked up to be.

So, your premise is that we just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on something that already existed? That is your defense of Common Core?

[Anonymous]

The only way we are going to get away from this insanity is to stop the mandated high stakes testing. Once the high stakes testing is gone, we can work on standards that make sense. As long as the high stakes testing is in place, we are forced to teach based on standards that have not been vetted and that don't make sense. You really can't make up how absurd this is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Prove they're not.

No, that's not how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

you might first at least take a look at some of the comparative analyses that were done. Again, in some cases the language that was used in Common Core came directly from state standards. They were not developed from scratch, in a vacuum. The status quo that you want to waste hundreds of millions of dollars through getting rid of Common Core and going back to is really not what you have it cracked up to be.

So, your premise is that we just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on something that already existed? That is your defense of Common Core?

I am not the PP, but I believe that the PP's post addresses the "they weren't vetted!!!!!!!!!!!!!1" argument.

You can't argue simultaneously that the standards were made up from scratch AND that standards are merely restatements of existing standards -- or rather, you can, but it's not a logical argument.

[Anonymous]

We have no idea how they came up with the standards because there was no explanation put out to the public.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The only way we are going to get away from this insanity is to stop the mandated high stakes testing. Once the high stakes testing is gone, we can work on standards that make sense. As long as the high stakes testing is in place, we are forced to teach based on standards that have not been vetted and that don't make sense. You really can't make up how absurd this is.

We've been through that one a dozen times already also. The only reason you call it "high stakes testing" is because teachers are also being evaluated on performance. As though teachers were never before in history evaluated on performance... (again naivete on your part) and you fail to acknowledge that the educational achievement of students is the "high stakes" issue here which does not go away if you get rid of testing. All you've done then is bury and hide problems with student achievement by getting rid of testing.

Seems the anti-CCer motto is "if you don't have a better solution to the problem, hide it and pretend it doesn't exist"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We have no idea how they came up with the standards because there was no explanation put out to the public.

Actually there has been plenty of explanation.

We have now galloped from "The standards were made up from scratch!" (No, they weren't, they were based on existing standards.) to "The standards are a waste of money because they just duplicate existing standards!" (But weren't they supposedly made up from scratch...?) to "We have no idea how they came up with the standards!" (Yes, we do; but weren't they supposedly made up from scratch...?)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The only way we are going to get away from this insanity is to stop the mandated high stakes testing. Once the high stakes testing is gone, we can work on standards that make sense. As long as the high stakes testing is in place, we are forced to teach based on standards that have not been vetted and that don't make sense. You really can't make up how absurd this is.

We've been through that one a dozen times already also. The only reason you call it "high stakes testing" is because teachers are also being evaluated on performance. As though teachers were never before in history evaluated on performance... (again naivete on your part) and you fail to acknowledge that the educational achievement of students is the "high stakes" issue here which does not go away if you get rid of testing. All you've done then is bury and hide problems with student achievement by getting rid of testing.

Seems the anti-CCer motto is "if you don't have a better solution to the problem, hide it and pretend it doesn't exist"

However, high-stakes testing does cause problems of its own:

http://www.amazon.com/Tested-American-School-Struggles-Grade/dp/0805088024
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer