NPR article

[Bang!Zoom!]

I will withhold my opinion of this for now.

 

http://www.npr.org/2013/07/23/204516709/teachers-hit-the-books-to-master-new-education-standards

[Snickerdoodle]

:lurk5:

[Bang!Zoom!]

Better make that two buckets.

 

:lurk5:  :lurk5:

[SKL]

I just took a brief look at the article, so forgive my ignorance.  I just feel that it's one thing to say "we're gonna teach kids more & younger," and it's another to actually do it.  Just presenting it younger, without making the presentation etc. age-appropriate, isn't going to stick in my experience - except in the case of kids who ought to be accelerated learners in the first place.

 

This type of approach is the reason so many people are afraid to put their perfectly normal, intelligent children into school at the age they are traditionally supposed to start.  Of course the results of that are great for the schools - a kid starting 1st at age 7 is going to pick up stuff easier, and even be easier to manage - but it's not so great for the individual child whose development is artificially delayed.  Or for the kid whose parent decides to buck the trend and start an average kid at the traditional age.  (A reasonable thing to do IMO!)

 

I also wonder how balanced their approach is, considering how many kids are still graduating without minimal basic skills (or dropping out).

[SKL]

I think it would be interesting to see what the trends would look like if standardized tests scores were analyzed based on age instead of grade level.

[SKL]

I would expect that age doesn't matter as much as family culture and whether the teacher is actually teaching, or just presenting.

 

What I mean is that as the pressure mounts to redshirt neurotypical children, your average 6yo is doing KG work instead of 1st grade work and so on.  And even if KG work is a little more advanced than it used to be, it probably isn't enough to cancel the effect of holding back a capable child.  So children age 6.5, say, would average a lower achievement level now than in the past.  That would be my guess, anyway.

[Caroline]

What I mean is that as the pressure mounts to redshirt neurotypical children, your average 6yo is doing KG work instead of 1st grade work and so on.  And even if KG work is a little more advanced than it used to be, it probably isn't enough to cancel the effect of holding back a capable child.  So children age 6.5, say, would average a lower achievement level now than in the past.  That would be my guess, anyway.

 

Common Core standardized tests are specific to the standards as they are listed. It wouldn't make sense to test a 6 year old kindergartener any differently from a 5 year old kindergartener because the testing will be based on what they should have been taught in school that year. That would be like giving a 15 year old a geometry test even though he is a 9th grader and has only taken algebra just because most 15 year olds are 10th graders in geometry.

 

I suppose people who accelerate their kids would like to have them tested at age level instead of grade level--it would mean an easier test for the accelerated kids. 

[SKL]

Common Core standardized tests are specific to the standards as they are listed. It wouldn't make sense to test a 6 year old kindergartener any differently from a 5 year old kindergartener because the testing will be based on what they should have been taught in school that year. That would be like giving a 15 year old a geometry test even though he is a 9th grader and has only taken algebra just because most 15 year olds are 10th graders in geometry.

 

I suppose people who accelerate their kids would like to have them tested at age level instead of grade level--it would mean an easier test for the accelerated kids. 

 

I don't seem to be articulating my point very well.  I mean it would be interesting from an overall trend analysis perspective to see the achievement trends by age and not just by grade.  If "higher standards" is leading to more redshirting, then the trend by age is going to be different from the trend by grade.  To me that would be worth knowing.

 

It seems futile at best to make all these changes if the kids are not actually learning things any faster or better.

 

It's been a long time since I've taken a standardized test, but I thought they were designed to accommodate a broad range of kids in each group.

[Arcadia]

I don't seem to be articulating my point very well.  I mean it would be interesting from an overall trend analysis perspective to see the achievement trends by age and not just by grade.  If "higher standards" is leading to more redshirting, then the trend by age is going to be different from the trend by grade.  To me that would be worth knowing.

 

It's been a long time since I've taken a standardized test, but I thought they were designed to accommodate a broad range of kids in each group.

The California standardized tests for LA and Math don't differentiate much.  The Scantron test do differentiate and it would be interesting for me to see how my kids compare age wise but the results is by grade level. My older is the youngest for grade while younger is oldest for grade.

[MistyMountain]

I'm not a fan of increasing standards in kindergarten and pushing the cut off farther back and then people red shirt kids with earlier and earlier birthdays. My kids all miss the cut off. I rather they have an extra year of knowledge for their age rather then expecting too much from kindergartners so they push back the cut off. So many kids are 19 or almost 19 when they graduate high school and get a later start at adulthood. I don't think all kids need that.

[Uff Da!]

I don't know a lot of about Common Core and thought the article vague.  I think it's not reasonable to expect students in Silicon Valley and students from the Southside of Chicago to be studying the same material or at the same point come an assessment.  I don't see how this would really help either population.  I just searched our charter's website to see if they mention anything about Common Core.  There is nothing mentioned and so I am wondering if our school is exempt from applying it, or ignoring it.  I do think some schools need non-local intervention'initiatives (I'm not sure how the interventions should be done) but the one we are in is thriving and I hope all of this stays far from our healthy school.  Our school told us the kids would test poorly when they were young because they are in an immersion setting.  It would be sad to see the goal of teaching languages trumped by the need for test scores relating to someone else's idea of what our kids should be learning at a specific age.  I think part of the reason our school is thriving is because the families involved are committed, supportive of teachers and the students and not looking at test scores.  I was thinking this last week about the importance of local initiative and involvement in the schools.  In some places, local involvement works and outside meddling would be harmful.  In other places, outside help is needed but its probably needed in the form of funding that gets to the classroom and maybe lowers teacher/student ratios, provides aides and so forth.

[Caroline]

As someone who spends all day every day in a public school and who spends a lot of time looking at public school data due to her job, I don't believe the red shirting phenomenon is as wide spread as people think. Published numbers are at less than 5%. And there is little evidence that this practice is increasing. Also, different school systems have very different cut off dates. What might be red shirting in New York is not red shirting in Georgia for instance.

 

I do believe some standardized tests do take age into account. I know the test my kids took to get into the gifted program was based solely on age, not grade.

 

However, the CCSS tests are a whole different beast than the ones you are remembering. They are completely based on what kids should have learned that year in school based on the standards. It is not the wide ranging achievement tests that I think you are talking about.

 

Another thing about the CCSS tests is that they are not going to be all multiple choice tests. They will have constructed and extended response questions.

 

The complex reading is not all in English class. Like Heigh Ho said, it is more about the nonfiction texts in science and social studies and even math. The idea behind it is that we need to teach students to critically think about what they are reading. It's about not taking everything at face value. Those are skills that need to be taught and have been neglected. However, it isn't just about reading the textbooks, it is about reading primary sources, newspapers, journal articles, etc. Did you know that most military documents are of a higher complexity than most college textbooks? I am talking about things that enlisted men have to read and understand. We truly need to do a better job of teaching reading comprehension skills, beyond a fifth grade level, which is where most reading instruction stops.

[Arcadia]

  I just searched our charter's website to see if they mention anything about Common Core.  There is nothing mentioned and so I am wondering if our school is exempt from applying it, or ignoring it.  

 

Roll-out for the state is expected to be 2014/15 school year. So my kids will still be sitting for the "old" STAR testing in April/May 2014.

Details for California.

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sa/practicetest.asp

[Dmmetler]

My entire state rolled back their start date by 2 months this year, and it's moved by 6 months over the last decade, so even if parents aren't red-shirting (in my area, it's very SES based-middle income families red-shirt, upper income families send kids to private schools (which often have earlier cut-offs or require readiness testing or both,lower income families put their kids in school as soon as possible), kids are older than they used to be.

[SKL]

Is this supposed to apply to only public schools?  Will private schools continue to do what they do now as far as testing?  (I realize folks may not know the answer to this.)

[SKL]

As someone who spends all day every day in a public school and who spends a lot of time looking at public school data due to her job, I don't believe the red shirting phenomenon is as wide spread as people think. Published numbers are at less than 5%. And there is little evidence that this practice is increasing.

 

I do see where that shows up in research, but I also see other numbers such as 9% and 17%.  So I don't know what to believe.  Presumably the figures pertain to different populations.

 

I would also note that the 5% figure is for delayed kindergarten entry.  It does not count the kids who take two years of kindergarten, which is not an uncommon practice.

[Arcadia]

Is this supposed to apply to only public schools?  Will private schools continue to do what they do now as far as testing?  (I realize folks may not know the answer to this.)

Public schools will follow their state's rollout schedule.  Private schools continue to choose how and if they test.

[Caroline]

I do see where that shows up in research, but I also see other numbers such as 9% and 17%. So I don't know what to believe. Presumably the figures pertain to different populations.

 

I would also note that the 5% figure is for delayed kindergarten entry. It does not count the kids who take two years of kindergarten, which is not an uncommon practice.

I guarantee it isn't as high as 17%. Or even 9%.

[Uff Da!]

As far as I can tell, our school is just going to eat the scores.

 

I can see how this could be helpful for some schools where there is not transparency as to what is happening year to year in the classroom.  I do not think there was transparency in the school I grew up in or, if there was, no one bothered to really examine what we were learning.  During my senior year, some of my classmates and I asked to be taught modern history.  My brother's class asked to be taught grammar because it had never been taught.  No one was keeping track as to what we were learning from one year to the next.  At least, that's the way it seemed.  We knew some of the things we were missing from our education but no one bothered to ask us what we wanted or thought we needed.  That experience shaped my belief that parents and children need to be responsible for and involved in planning education.  

 

 We truly need to do a better job of teaching reading comprehension skills, beyond a fifth grade level, which is where most reading instruction stops.

 

 

I agree with this.  I also think there is more than one way to approach this problem and that this will not be beneficial for all schools.

[jenbrdsly]

Our school district teachers were in training for the Common Core standards this past weekend. 

 

I've heard, (not sure if this is true?) that the standardized tests are going to have a lot more writing in them.  Possibly related to this, I noticed that in Ko's Journey the assessment questions were all open ended writing prompts.  But in the teacher's guide, it showed the assessment questions as being multiple choice.  Ko's Journey is supposed to be based on the Common Core standards, so I'm wondering...

 

Did anyone else do Ko's Journey and notice this?

 

[Arcadia]

I've heard, (not sure if this is true?) that the standardized tests are going to have a lot more writing in them.

 

I read some time back that the writing portion would be less than originally planned due to cost of marking.

[Caroline]

Our school district teachers were in training for the Common Core standards this past weekend.

 

I've heard, (not sure if this is true?) that the standardized tests are going to have a lot more writing in them. Possibly related to this, I noticed that in Ko's Journey the assessment questions were all open ended writing prompts. But in the teacher's guide, it showed the assessment questions as being multiple choice. Ko's Journey is supposed to be based on the Common Core standards, so I'm wondering...

 

Did anyone else do Ko's Journey and notice this?

 

 

Yes, the plan is to havelore free response questions on the common core assessments. Georgia just pulled out of the PARCC because of cost, though, so I am wondering what is next. It is hard to plan with a moving target.