College and Career-Ready Standards for School Leaders

Students who took the exam on Saturday made clear on social media they were unhappy with the College Board's decision to let the exam results stand.

SAT Mistake 2015: College Board Won't Score Two Sections Affected By Printing Error, Students Remain Upset

As school districts wrap up administering new online assessments aligned with the Common Core, educators now face another challenge: how best to share with millions of parents how their children fared on the tests.

At stake is whether parents – and by extension students themselves – will be able to understand what the scores on the new tests mean. Without that understanding, test scores on the new online tests could raise anxieties among both parents and students, including whether students are being adequately prepared for the next grade, college and the workplace.

As the school year draws to a close, many students are taking standardized tests tied to the Common Core. But in some communities there has been a strong backlash, with parents deciding to opt out of having their children participate. The NewsHour’s William Brangham talks to special correspondent for education John Merrow and Motoko Rich of The New York Times.

The Parent Engagement Initiative (PEI), a branch of the Collaborative for Student Success, has embarked on a messaging and information campaign to reach parents in target states about the assessments and what they mean for students. In an effort to share the messaging research we have conducted and the state outreach, I hope you will join us for a webinar on Thursday May 28, 2015 from 3-4 ET. We will provide information on the materials developed and explain how you can brand, use and share thes

he National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and its sister group, the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics, have written an open letter criticizing the methodolgy used by EdReports.org, which published its first round of curriculum reviews in March. Those reviews found that nearly all of the math series evaluated failed to meet criteria for alignment to the Common Core State Standards.

"Unfortunately, the EdReports methodology, including its evaluation tool and process, has produced reviews that fall short of providing useful and accurate information about many critical features of materials reviewed," the letter from NCTM and NCSM states. "As a result, the current ratings and reviews do not provide the types and quality of information needed to make informed choices about the extent to which particular materials support students' learning, or teachers' teaching, of [the common-core standards for mathematics]."

"With our principals’ and directors’ leadership, our staff embraces the Common Core standards as benchmarks for learning, and they are supported in using their own approaches and materials to get us there. This autonomy has allowed our staff to convey the content and concepts of the standards to students in a variety of ways — as initially intended by those who created the Common Core."

        Chalkbeat New York (5/14) says that the report indicates that New York is “one of only two states” in which more students pass the NAEP than do the state test. The piece notes that most states “say most of their students are proficient, while NAEP scores paint a grimmer picture.”

NCTM and the Hunt Institute have produced a series of videos on Teaching and Learning Mathematics with the Common Core to enhance understanding of the mathematics that students need to succeed in college, life, and careers.

This important historical literacy skill is closely aligned with Common Core State Standards, in particular CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.9, where students “Analyze a case in which two or more texts provide conflicting information on the same topic and identify where the texts disagree on matters of fact or interpretation.”

Experts say new open-ended questions that tap critical thinking provide a marked improvement.

In response to criticism that its test is too long, and takes a major toll on school scheduling and personnel, PARCC announces a major redesign.

The consortium has announced that the 2015-16 version will be 90 minutes shorter, and will be given in one 30-day window, instead of broken into two (one for the performance tasks and another for the short-answer end-of-year component).

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ABI FROST

Most teachers I know have a deep interest in words and academic language.  That’s probably why many of us became teachers— so we could expand and deepen students’ vocabularies and in turn make them stronger readers, writers, speakers and thinkers.  Right?  Unfortunately, most teenagers are not inherently “word nerds” like we are.  In addition to teaching students new words, it is our responsibility to make them more aware and interested in the words they encounter in their daily lives.  We talk about foundations and scaffolds, but how can we build students’ vocabularies?  How can we create a class culture that values curiosity and consciousness about new words?  How can we raise students’ word consciousness?

Tennessee is among a handful of "truth-tellers" about how well its students are doing in reading, according to reserach on the "honesty gap" released Thursday. the state test scores don't match NAEP standards as well in math.

        The Memphis (TN) Commercial Appeal (5/15) notes that the report named Tennessee among the eight states designated “truth-tellers,” pointing out that while 49% of the state’s students were deemed proficient on last spring’s reading tests, NAEP “said only 34 percent were actually prepared, a 15 percent gap.” Chalkbeat Tennessee (5/14) also covers this story, noting that the US Chamber of Commerce once panned the state as “among the nation’s most dishonest states when reporting student performance.”