WHAT IS COMMON CORE?
Georgia schools are now using new standards called Common Core, which are intended to bring academic standards in line with the rest of the nation and better prepare Georgia’s students for college or careers. Critics say it’s forcing districts to give up too much local control over what kids are learning.
Here is a sampling of some of the changes:
Fourth-graders tackle comparing fractions, which was not taught until fifth grade under the former curriculum.
In eighth grade, students are using the Pythagorean theorem to find the distance between two coordinates, an exercise that wasn’t previously taught until ninth grade.
This coming spring, nearly two dozen states across the country will be field testing a new standardized assessment designed to determine if students are meeting the national set of academic standards called Common Core.
Georgia won’t be one of those states.
Georgia’s decision to pull out of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a collection of state education officials designing a new Common Core test, pleased some opponents of the national standards. But it also raises a big question: How, exactly, will Georgia learn if its students are meeting the new standards?
So far, the answer to that question is: Stay tuned.
Georgia’s current standardized assessment, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, is aligned to Common Core, which Georgia adopted in 2010. But that test does not offer the state-to-state comparisons that would be available if the PARCC test was taken by Georgia students.
Superintendent John Barge has said state-to-state comparisons aren’t as important as making sure students can meet the new standards and that parents get an honest view of how students are performing. He said the “cut” scores on the CRCT, the threshold used to determine whether a student has met or exceeded the state standard in a particular subject, are too low.
Melissa Fincher, associate superintendent for assessment and accountability, said Georgia will have a new test in place for the 2014-2015 school year, when it would have offered the PARCC test.
But a year from when the new test is supposed to be offered, it’s not clear who will design it or how much it will cost.
Fincher said the state is developing a request for proposals from firms that will bid to develop Georgia’s new test.
Gov. Nathan Deal and Barge pulled Georgia out of PARCC in July, because of concerns about how much its test could cost. The decision pleased some opponents of Common Core, who see the standards as a national intrusion into state control over K-12 education.
The PARCC test, which will cover math and English/language arts, could have cost Georgia as much as $27 million — more than the state’s entire testing budget.
Still, state Sen. Fran Millar, a Republican from Dunwoody who once served as chairman of the Senate’s Education Committee, said he’s not sure the price tag for the PARCC test was too high.
“We spend nearly $8 billion a year on education,” he said. “Was $30 million really, at the end of the day, too much?”
The PARCC test is expected to cost about $30 per pupil, about double the per-pupil cost of assessments in Georgia. Half of the states in PARCC spend less than $30 per pupil; half spend more.
Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank, said states get what they pay for when it comes to assessments.
He questioned the wisdom of Georgia’s decision to offer its own assessment instead of the one being developed by PARCC, a decision he called “a huge mistake.”
“I think Georgia can do it alone,” he said. “I don’t think Georgia can do it on the cheap.”
Petrilli said Georgians should be concerned about whether the test Georgia offers will provide an honest assessment of how students are performing or the rose-tinted view offered by the current assessment, the CRCT.
In 2011, CRCT results showed that 88 percent of Georgia’s 4th-graders met or exceeded the state standard for reading. About 81 percent of 4th-graders met or exceeded the state standard for math.
That same year, however, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — frequently referred to as “the nation’s report card” — showed that 66 percent of Georgia 4th-graders were at or above a basic level in reading. Only 32 percent were at or above a proficient level in reading.
In math, NAEP showed that 80 percent of 4th-graders were at or above basic. Only 37 percent were at or above a proficient level.
The gap between what Georgia’s test showed and what a national assessment showed was large for 8th-graders, too.
The 2011 CRCT showed that 96 percent of 8th-graders met or exceeded the state standard in reading. NAEP showed that 74 percent were at or above a basic level in reading, and 28 percent were at or above a proficient level.
“We’ve had so much fiction over the years,” Millar said. “I have no faith in state government giving realistic information to parents about their kids.”
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