Dive Brief:
- Scores from early rounds of Common Core-related testing are beginning to trickle in and they’re higher than many anticipated.
- Eleven states — including Oregon, Connecticut, and Vermont — have released either initial or final scores, and few states cleared 50% proficiency in any subject.
- The scores, while higher, are still considerably lower than under prior testing regimens, but school leaders nationwide spent months preparing parents for lower scores this year after field tests found most students would not score proficient.
Dive Insight:
It can take years for new standards to have a substantial impact on test scores, despite calls for urgency. In Massachusetts, an overhaul implemented 20 years ago have just begun to pay dividends in recent years. Early results from those efforts were disappointing, but the state is now one of the top-ranked in the U.S.
The Associated Press did raise a more troubling issue: One of the new tests’ primary goals does not seem to be playing out. The Common Core-aligned tests were supposed to let parents and policymakers compare results across states via common standards and assessments. Thanks to the fragmentation of the testing landscape and local rejections of consortium-developed tests, however, that is no longer possible. Even the two big testing consortiums involved — PARCC and SBAC — have not been able to agree on comparable cut points for student rankings.
"The whole idea of Common Core was to bring students and schools under a common definition of what success is," Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press. "And Common Core is not going to have that. One of its fundamental arguments has been knocked out from under it."
