Extremism in Defense of Mediocrity is Quite a Vice

Matthew Ladner:

Substitute the word "conservative" for "liberal" and the paragraph reads like Diane Ravitch. Ms. Malkin proceeds to repeat various anti-Common Core assertions as facts-but are they facts? Having read that last bit about "standards that do anything but set the achievement bar high" I decided to put it to a straightforward empirical test.

Kentucky was the earliest adopter of Common Core in 2012, and folks from the Department of Education sent some before and after statistics regarding 4th grade reading and math proficiency. I decided to compare them to NAEP, first 2011 KY state test and 2011 NAEP for 4th Grade Reading and Math. NAEP has four achievement levels: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced. Kentucky also has four achievement levels: Novice, Apprentice, Proficient and Distinguished. The first figure compares "Proficient or Better" on both NAEP and the state test in 2011:

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 4, 2013 2:15 AM
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