Tag Archives: Common Core Standards

Under Common Core, more schools could fail

BY ANDREW VANACORE

New Orleans bureau

June 20, 2013

Louisiana students and educators face a reckoning this coming school year.

The state’s standardized exams are getting harder, to fall in line with new federal standards known as the Common Core — much harder, by all accounts.

But the elaborate mechanisms by which the state holds teachers, schools and students accountable will remain the same unless state officials shift course.

Without policy changes, more students could be held back a grade and more schools could be labeled as “failing,” with the attendant possibility of a state takeover. Teachers could find that their methods fall flat once tests shift away from rote memorization to zero in on whether students understand underlying concepts.

Even advocates for the new standards argue that at least temporary policy changes may be necessary to provide a less-jarring glide path, especially after scores in Kentucky, the first state to adopt the Common Core, dropped by a third last year.

Read more:  http://theadvocate.com/