Yesterday, we posted that Pearson which administers the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) Common Core Assessments spied on students’ social media and wanted to suspend a student whom they thought had breached test security.

Now it has come out that the other of the two Common Core assessment consortia, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), is also advising state education departments to spy on student social media. Washington State is a member of the Smarter Balanced consortium.

Read the article…

See Smarter Balanced Assessment’s guidance sheet.

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It was confirmed that Pearson, a United Kingdom-based testing company involved in the development of Common Core Assessments, was “monitoring” the social media accounts of  New Jersey students taking the PARCC Common Core Assessment.  A student had sent a tweet about the PARCC assessment after school, and Pearson contacted the New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE) to have the student suspended, ostensibly on grounds of the student having breached test security. There was no evidence that the student had cheated. Pearson’s monitoring of the students’ social media was done in cooperation with the New Jersey DOE.

This is alarming on so many levels. Apparently, this is not the only student whom Pearson asked to be suspended. Why is a multinational testing company in cooperation with a US state governmental department delving into the social media of the students in New Jersey? Is this happening in other states as well?

PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) is one of the two consortia producing Common Core Assessments; the other is the SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) of which Washington State is a member. We do not know if Washington state students will also be “monitored?”

Read more….

(Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

When students take the Smarter Balanced Assessment this year, many may score poorly due to the computer-driven nature of the test, not because they did not know the material.  The Smarter Balanced Assessment is an online assessment, although a paper version will be made available during a transition period.  The flawed construction of the computer assessment is the subject of a critical report by education consultant Steven Rasmussen. Read the Education Week article about Steve Rasmussen’s Report and Steve Rasmussen’s report itself .

Rasmussen urges people to share his report with their friends. Please do so! And consider opting your child out of the Common Core Assessment.

Common Core proponents continue to make unsubstantiated claims about the standards’ merits and the way they were created. This commentary by Anthony Cody dispels those myths. It was posted on the Education Week site in 2013, but it still holds true.

Read the commentary.

(Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Here is another concerned mom’s testimony before her State Board of Education in Arkansas. There have been many parents speaking out against what is happening to their children. When will the legislators and the members of the boards of education start listening??

The Washington State House of Representatives now has a bill to eliminate the Common Core!

House Bill 2165, sponsored by Representative Elizabeth Scott, calls for a revision of the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs) such that they do NOT align with the Common Core, and it calls for Washington to withdraw from the Smarter Balanced Assessments Consortium.

The happy news is that bills such as this one and Senate Bill 6030 against the Common Core, will be alive for two years. Even though the bills may not become law during this session, they still have a chance next year.

They say politics make strange bedfellows, and it’s true. A coalition of very progressive grassroots progressives, very conservative grassroots conservatives, and the whole spectrum in between have joined to reject the Common Core State Standards. At the same time, Democrat Senator Marilyn Chase and Republican Senator Pam Roach have co-sponsored Senate Bill 6030 to reject the Common Core and return to what we had before–the Washington Essential Academic Learning Requirements or “EALRs.”

While we have never been fans of the the EALRs, at least they were Washington State EALRs. This bill is a first step in returning education control to the state level. When we once again have control over our own state standards, we will have the ability to improve them.

Read Washington State Senate Bill 6030 here.

Stay tuned. There will be a similar bill soon in the Washington State House of Representatives.

The GED, the General Educational Development test, is produced by the American Council on Education. In 2011, it  partnered with Pearson and the GED was aligned  with the Common Core State Standards. Pearson is heavily involved with both the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and with Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) which are the assessment consortia developing assessments for the Common Core State Standards.

Beginning in 2014, students taking the GED took the revised test aligned with the Common Core State Standards

According to the e-newsletter SCENE, about 540,000 students earned their GED in 2013. In 2014 with the changes in the GED, that number has dropped to about 55,000. Read the article.

Some states have stopped requiring the GED and have begun to require alternate testing. See the map.

The GED’s new alignment with the Common core means that even students that were homeschooled must become knowledgeable about the Common Core standards if they want to earn their GED.

The new GED test will not only flunk more students but will discourage many from even attempting the exam.

Research increasingly shows that young children are not ready for the types of questions presented in the Common Core Assessments and practice exercises. At a conference held at Notre Dame in September 2013, Dr.Megan Koschnick explained how the Common Core questions are causing stress and harm to young children.