Posted on by arotherham

Buy PARCC! Sell SBAC!

New Education Insiders survey out, this one is public.  A lot of interesting stuff, Politics K-12 has some here and Curriculum Matters here.

What jumps out at me is how consistently negative the insiders are about the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia – one of two national consortia developing new Common Core aligned assessments. They are more enthusiastic this month than in the past but still negative right track/wrong track perceptions.  Also some interesting stuff on the SAT and Common Core and pretty strong sentiment that a Romney win means “gainful employment” rule gets opened up again.

You can read the entire survey here.

4 Replies to “Buy PARCC! Sell SBAC!”

  1. Heaven help us if the quality of the Common Core assessments is less than that of the SAT! It’s time to get back to work on more meaningful assessments, since these consortia sound like they will be unlikely to deliver what’s needed.

  2. Sometime, it may occur to all these folks in the USA who advocate for this or that approach or whatEVER–that we’re making this all too hard. The Finns already figured it out. There is literally NO WAY anyone can keep straight all the different variables at differing levels of confidence that work in this or that situation under what conditions of political or economic stress who can predict educational outcomes. Sorry, you can’t do it.

    The Common Core is a nice thing. Just don’t go ruining it by trying to test whether or not teacher/students can parrot back its requirements.

  3. Brillant Hypocrisy in Texas

    The Texas Coalition for a Competitive Workforce blamed teachers and school administrators for “demonizing” standardized testing and panicking parents about exams such as STAAR, which was administered statewide for the first time this year.A coalition of Texas business leaders announced Wednesday that it would oppose future hikes in education funding.The coalition said it would oppose future funding increases for public schools if the current accountability system is weakened — and said pro-education groups that have opposed past state-cuts to school funding while also opposing more standardized tests, “want more money for less accountability.”

    So, these business “leaders” stay silent as Last year, the Legislature rewrote the school funding formula to cut $4 billion, despite average public school enrollment increasing by 80,000 students per year statewide. Another $1.4 billion in cuts were made to grant programs. but if the money was to be restored, they want to piss it away on tests.

    Another sign of their stupidity or hubris, is that the charge against this use of testing is coming from teachers. They seem to have forgotten that Robert Scott, then the Republican education commissioner of Texas, said early this year that the mentality that standardized testing is the “end-all, be-all” is a “perversion” of what a quality education should be. And he called “the assessment and accountability regime” not only “a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex.”

    As is the standard, don’t let the facts disturb the Professional Education Reform Movement.

  4. I think many of the Insiders miss the point of RTT-D. It is that in name and “authority” only, but has a different design and intent. It is nothing more than seed money to incentivize the piloting of a new education design model built around the student, not the teacher. RTT state structural reforms will only get us so far. We also need to test new models like personalized learning from which other local leaders can learn and borrow to make changes to practice and policy on the ground.

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