Some parents and teachers complained Common Core was badly designed. “Basically, what the committee is doing, and what the work groups have been doing is vet the standards” said Commission Co-Chair Tammy Covil.
Advertisement
Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Brian McDonald declined to say whether he was in favor of suspending the test. It is important for the future of our country, for our state and for the future of our children and grandchildren.
A majority of teachers and the public are opposed to the Obama administration’s proposal to require similar student suspension and expulsion rates across racial and ethnic groups. Students can choose most of the courses they want to be tested in, and they take the test over if they are dissatisfied with their results.
“It’s what everyone talks about during sophomore year, and if you don’t pass it, you can’t graduate, so it was putting a lot of pressure on us to make sure we pass”, de Jesus said.
For students who did sit for the exams their results, Moon said, remain relatively “flat” from last year. If they don’t pass, they have multiple opportunities to take it throughout their junior and senior years.
“If they keep failing it over and over they might think they will not be able to pass it at all and give up”.
Many critics of the questionable Common Core test contend that many of its questions are invasive and have little to do with students’ academic understanding.
“Passing the California High School Exit Examination was added as a requirement for high school graduation beginning with the Class of 2006”, Liu’s bill explains. Two work groups, one for math and one for English/language arts, produced draft reports. And, finally, how do we assess student performance against these standards? The standards consist of an established set of guidelines for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level.
And beneath the rhetoric, it seems that Christie’s New Jersey won’t be changing the newly-adopted standards as forcefully as Christie has indicated, but rather doing a re-branding.
“This is something that should have been done prior to the adoption of Common Core”, Co-Chairwoman Tammy Covil said.
Students with disabilities and those learning English are falling further behind their peers in Common Core standardized tests scores. On the left, Hillary Clinton called the arguments around Common Core “very painful, because the Common Core started off as a bi-partisan effort”, but she has avoided taking much of a position. Others have said students are not prepared for new tests, and that new testing benchmarks would be elitist and difficult to achieve, according to The Times.
Common Core backers say the rigorous standards improve education and make North Carolina competitive by producing a workforce that can solve problems. The final report is due by the end of 2015. Adding to that was the argument that Common Core provided the same high standard of education for all public school students regardless of social or economic background.
As with many issues in politics, very few people – even those with fierce opinions – understand what Common Core is or have actually plowed through the nearly 200 pages of the standards documents. While the assessments themselves take less than 1 percent of class time.
Advertisement
Whether or not an exit exam is reinstated in California remains to be seen.
