Editorial

Common Core — what a mess it is

Posted

More than 200,000 New York students “opted out” of the grades three-through-eight Common Core English and math exams this spring. That’s 20 percent of the total taking the tests. On Long Island, the opt-out rate reached 40 percent.

What began a handful of years ago as a small, grass-roots protest has ballooned into a full-scale movement, fueled by social media. Tens of thousands of parents instructed their children to sit out the exams, which, they charge, are formulated to produce a high failure rate. Test questions, many prominent educators have said, often exceed students’ knowledge base by one to two grade levels. That’s unfair.

Here’s the thing: Common Core has quietly crept into the high schools as well. In 2014, the New York State Education Department began offering a Common Core Algebra I Regents exam. This year it introduced the Common Core geometry, Algebra II and English Language Arts exams. We did not see the high failure rates that we have at the elementary level. Educators, however, are reporting that fewer students attained “mastery level” –– a score of 85 or better –– on the new tests.

Unlike their elementary counterparts, high school students cannot opt out of the Regents exams, which are required for graduation. Current high school students thus have become guinea pigs in a grand testing experiment, as the State Education Department releases new learning standards with increasing regularity, with little to no explanation of how, precisely, teachers are to implement those standards –– and how they will translate into test questions on Regents exams.

At www.engageny.org, the state’s Common Core resource center, the Education Department this spring published limited examples of questions that could be on the Common Core state exams, with explanations of how they are scored, at both the elementary and high school levels, so students and educators will know what to expect.

But the state released relatively few of those questions and explanations. For the Algebra II exam, for example, it published just 14. It offered no real explanation for why it would not release more, only that doing so could jeopardize the security of future exams, according to school officials. Really? How?

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