Big Apple Common Core Scores Rotten: NY Ed Commissioner Passing the Buck

common-core-failsBack in April a professor in New York made a prediction about the assessments under the new Common Core Standards. Professor David C. Bloomfield said that the standards raise the bar but the test scores would most likely go down, at least at first.

Some of the big names behind the Common Core have even chimed in with the expectation that the scores on the new assessments would go down as far as 30%. Obviously, according to the educrats, the reasoning behind the lower scores will reflect glitches with the new assessments and the fact that they were brand new to the children.

And because the Common Core standards are so rigorous only the most intelligent of children could ever even dream of coming close to passing these assessments. I don’t actually believe this. (That’s my sarcasm shining through…)

The results have been released and Bloomfield was right in his assumption.

The test scores for New York children who took the fully implemented first round of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testing during the 2012-2013 school year are in and they’re ugly, indeed.

The test results show that less than 1/3 or New York students are proficient in the new English Language Arts and Math standards set forth by the Common Core Standards and the New York State Education Department. If you do math the tried and true way, like me, you know that means more than 2/3 of children in NY are not proficient in the new standards.

In case we worry that the children somehow became stupid, let’s remember that it isn’t that at all; the reason the children did so poorly on these tests is simply because the bar was supposedly raised so high! Educrats care so much about our children that they are practicing some tough love on them. Raise those standards and our kids will surely rise up to meet them.

Here is what one 5th grader in New York who took the assessment had to say about it:

“I felt that a lot of these questions are just so confusing that  – just — they’re asking for the kids to fail,” Fifth-grader Jackson Zavala said.

Guess what, Jackson? I fully agree with you. I am an adult who has been poring over these so-called “rigorous” standards for months now. I’ve even taken the new assessments online. And you know something? They are confusing.

In a letter posted on Rocky Point Unified School District’s website, Dr. Michael F. Ring, superintendent of that district says the following:

“As the results released today show, this prediction by SED has been realized and aggregate proficiency attainment at all levels has declined dramatically. Despite the prior knowledge that this year’s scores would be drastically impacted by SED’s changes to the assessments, it is nonetheless disconcerting to see such disappointing levels of proficiency.

He continues on to quote New York Commissioner of Education, John B. King Jr.:

“There are those who will use the change in students’ proficiency rates to attack teachers and principals. That’s just plain wrong. I’ve said over and over again: the change in proficiency rates does not mean teachers are teaching less or that students are learning less than last year.”

The almost exasperated-sounding King needs to quell his scolding of what a parent might blame a teacher for.

Parents across New York did protest after the results were released but they aren’t upset with the teachers. They’re not mad at the children. They’re mad at these educrats, like Commissioner King, who are doing the exact wrong thing with education. They are upset that their children are being used as guinea pigs for an untested, unproven, experiment in education reform that will fail.

The accounts I’ve read of students and teachers in New York being sick, stressed, and in tears during these assessments were heart breaking enough, but to see the results and the continuing support of these standards and assessments form people who are supposed to care for children and teachers is enough to make you lose your lunch.

In case you misunderstand and thing that these tests were just very rigorous (as the Common Core Standards love to tout) and the children not up to snuff, you have to understand this, coming from adults who have taken these tests and read these standards over and over:

Imagine that what you’ve been learning and what you’ve been memorizing is written in Spanish. It was hard to understand at first because you speak English as your first tongue. Eventually you do understand Spanish enough to be proficient even though there are aspects that make no sense.

The day has come, you’ve gotten up early, eaten a healthy breakfast, and are ready for the assessment.

You get to class and sign in to take the test and the first question pops up.

And to your absolute horror you cannot figure out the questions–because they are in Chinese.

Hence, the shockingly low proficiency levels on the assessments in New York.

Those children are not dumb. They are being taken advantage of in the worst way by people in charge of education and even test taking manufacturers who are using our kids as pawns in a gigantic, tragic game of epic proportions that will dismantle the entire institution of public education as we know it.

This “crisis” will just show our Big Brother how much we need them and their overreaching, unrealistic, copyrighted, and riddled with errors, corporation supported and big money making Common Core Standards in our classrooms.

Parents? Wake up. Get angry. Remember the sick stomach your child had before he went to take these tests. Remember dragging him into school on those days. And realize you were only doing what the so-called “experts” said we needed to do to “fix” the problem with American education.

These standards and these assessments measure students and teachers as well as having a scale in your closet helps you lose weight. They tell you how intelligent your child is as well as the 400 points of data being collected on your child as part of this Common Core scam will tell you who your child is in their heart and soul.

I used to think that maybe the Common Core creators were doing what they thought was best for our children, however misguided.

Now I see. Now everyone should see. This is going to fail. We will lose a generation of kids’ educations while Common people play their games and work their experiment.

Before it even gets to “passing go,” we need to stand up and say: Game Over.

Macey France

Oregon PolitiChick Macey France is co-founder of the Stop Common Core in Oregon and is working with parents across the state to educate and help them to learn how to advocate for their children's education. Macey has spoken at many Common Core informational meetings across the state of Oregon. Macey's articles on Common Core have been picked up by various news outlets and she has been a guest on many radio shows across the nation. Macey's article about The Bluest Eye was featured on a panel on Al Jazeera America and was nominated for a CPAC Blogger Award for Best Sunlight Post of 2013. Macey is a strong conservative with libertarian leanings, making her more of a "conservatarian." Preserving the constitutional and moral values of that this great nation was founded on for her children is her priority. She is a stay at home mom of two boys who are now in elementary school. As a mom who has always been interested in politics, religion and all of the taboo subjects, she has always had a lot to say about the state of the nation. When she realized the Common Core Standards were not only bad news for children but a government coup over education, she decided to fight back and is now considered one of the nation's leading experts on all-things-Common Core. When she's not having uncomfortable arguments with strangers on Facebook she can be found spending time with her husband of 15 years and two sons. Find Macey France on Facebook and Twitter: @MaceyFrancePC

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