Dive Brief:
- States that have dropped out of the two main Common Core testing consortia have been forced to fund the development of new exams, many of which have come with their own tech glitches and expensive price tags.
- The Daily Caller reports Tennessee signed a $108 million contract with Measurement Inc. to administer a new exam that was abruptly canceled in April, keeping third through eighth graders from taking a test this year and leading to an emergency contract of $18 million with Pearson to grade paper-and-pencil tests that followed a breakdown in the original online testing platform.
- Indiana would have spent $12 million on its tests as a member of PARCC but spent $24 million to update its old state test, while Mississippi went from its $8 million bill for PARCC administration in 2015 to a more than $12 million price tag for a 2016 replacement.
Dive Insight:
The Common Core State Standards and the idea of a uniform education plan for the entire country was far more popular than expected when presented to state leaders in 2009. The fact that 44 states plus the District of Columbia once approved of these common standards, in a nation known for fierce protection of individual states’ rights over education, was, to some of the original architects, astounding. But as the standards were painted as a federal overreach and implementation timelines and testing plans caused fear and anger among teachers and families, states started moving in the other direction.
Nearly two dozen states have pulled out of the testing consortia in the last few years. This means the coast-to-coast comparisons of student performance that a uniform test would have allowed will not be possible. One thing supporters can hold onto is the fact that the content of the standards themselves has remained in place in a majority of states.
