Anonymous wrote:

Have you looked at the Common Core standards? If not, consider doing so. I would be interested to know which things your child's teacher thinks the children are not ready for and are not in their best interests.

Kindergarten standards are not appropriate for many of the kids.

Have you looked at the Common Core standards? If not, consider doing so. I would be interested to know which things your child's teacher thinks the children are not ready for and are not in their best interests.

Anonymous wrote:

Have you looked at the Common Core standards? If not, consider doing so. I would be interested to know which things your child's teacher thinks the children are not ready for and are not in their best interests.

The whole trend with high stakes testing is driving people to private schools. The best teachers are the ones who will leave (because they can find employment elsewhere).

Have you looked at the Common Core standards? If not, consider doing so. I would be interested to know which things your child's teacher thinks the children are not ready for and are not in their best interests.

Anonymous wrote:We are in DCPS and we love our school. However, our beloved teacher confided in us that the common core standards are making him reconsider whether or not to continue teaching. He said its so hard for him to push kids to do things they are not ready for, and that he does not believe are in the best interests of the kids. He said if you can afford private school, he would encourage it.

Anonymous wrote:

Also, the tests are not designed to characterize your child's strengths and weaknesses. They are designed to demonstrate whether or not the children in that grade in that school, as a group, are meeting the grade-level standards -- because that's the purpose of the tests, according to the federal law that requires them.

But the schools have now received waivers from the federal law's consequences. So what do these tests really mean to individual students and parents? What is the federal government going to do with the information gleaned? Just publish it and move on? How does that help either the schools, the students, the parents, or their teachers?

Also, the tests are not designed to characterize your child's strengths and weaknesses. They are designed to demonstrate whether or not the children in that grade in that school, as a group, are meeting the grade-level standards -- because that's the purpose of the tests, according to the federal law that requires them.

Anonymous wrote:If 70% of kids fail (which, btw, is a wild prediction not unlike saying all the computers would fail on Jan. 1, 2000), then clearly there's something systemic going on. Like I said, either the kids aren't being taught properly or there's a fatal flaw in the test. But you can't make that determination based on a hypothetical that 70% will fail; it actually has to happen.

As for as the learning disability goes -- I get that's a problem. However, I also think there are accommodations made for other standardized tests (i.e. SAT) that can probably be adapted in this case. But simply saying that "my kid is learning disabled, ergo no testing allowed!" is foolish.

Anonymous wrote:How often do you use the information on the written drivers' test vs your behind the wheel practice? Like which way to turn the wheels when parking on a hill. Do you remember that? Like prepping for a CC test.

Anonymous wrote:

Also, it's not possible to teach standards. Teaching is curriculum.

You are parsing words. You do know that the tests are created to measure the standards, don't you? NOt the curriculum.

Also, it's not possible to teach standards. Teaching is curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

A dissection of Common Core math test questions leaves educator ‘appalled’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/30/a-dissection-of-common-core-math-test-questions-leaves-educator-appalled/

Using the sample of released items in the New York Common Core tests, I recently spent some time looking over the eighth-grade math results and items to see what was to be learned – and I came away appalled at what I found.

Readers will recall that the whole point of the standards is that they be embedded in complex problems that require both content and practice standards. But what were the hardest questions on the 8th grade test? Picayune, isolated, and needlessly complex calculations of numbers using scientific notation. And in one case, an item is patently invalid in its convoluted use of the English language to set up the prompt, as we shall see.

As I have long written, there is a sorry record in mass testing of sacrificing validity for reliability. This test seems like a prime example. Score what is easy to score, regardless of the intent of the Common Core Standards. There are 28 eighth-grade math standards. Why do such arguably less important standards have at least five items related to them? (Who decided which standards were most important? Who decided to test the standards in complete isolation from one another simply because that is psychometrically cleaner?)