The House/Senate conference committee in Tennessee charged with merging separate bills regarding Common Core has made its recommendations, and while they appear a reasonable compromise on the surface, I have my doubts.
First, they’ve recommended that PARCC be delayed for a year and TCAP be used next year to assess students, teachers and schools and that the Board of Education put out a request for proposal (RFP) for new assessments. From the bill, which can be found here:
The Tennessee comprehensive assessment program (TCAP) tests, inclusive of achievement, end of course and the comprehensive writing assessments, shall be administered in the subjects of English language arts and math in grades three through eleven (3-11) during the 2014-2015 school year.
Prior to the 2015-2016 school year, the department of education shall issue a request for proposals and, through competitive bidding, contract with one (1) or more entities to provide assessments in English language arts and math, which shall be aligned to state standards and fully implemented during the 2015-2016 school year. Prior
to the 2015-2016 school year, such tests shall be field tested and shall replace the existing assessments in the applicable subject area.
Second, they’ve recommended that all Common Core standards other than math and ELA be postponed until further notice:
The state of Tennessee shall not adopt common core state standards in any subject matter beyond math and English language arts.
Here’s a brief analysis from the Tennessee Education Report as to the likelihood of this compromise becoming law:
Unless the General Assembly wants to stay in session for a few more days, it seems likely that this report will be adopted as the compromise position — allowing Tennessee to proceed with the Common Core as currently adopted and taking a step back to assess which test best meets the state’s needs.
My take is that while on the surface it looks like a reasonable compromise, underneath it all it appears to be a path for anti-Common Core legislators to start dismantling the standards here in Tennessee. This legislation doesn’t explicitly say we will eliminate common core, but it does put major restrictions on the scope of its implementation and its accompanying assessments and starts the roll back.
Now would be a good time for Common Core supporters to start calling their legislators and letting them know where you stand.
[update after initial post] the house and the senate have both voted to pass this report, meaning that PARCC and Common Core beyond math and ELA will continue to be suspended from being implemented until next year at the earliest.
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I’m not sure there are going to be a lot of local callers in support of this. Many of the critical parties are genuine grass roots organizations. Most of the big money stands behind Common Core (Gates Foundation, Walton Foundation, StudentsFirst, the same old players). The Tea Party may stand against it, but this brand of education reform is something the big players on both the right and the left have been in agreement. I, for one, am happy to see some people have taken the CCSS and, more importantly, PARCC to task.
The only aspect of this I find a bit rash is the move to prevent the adoption of any CCSS beyond English and Math, which do not exist yet and have no way of being assessed.
Otherwise it calls for a proper proposal of assessment through competitive bidding and field testing. Something that should have been done a long time ago.
I suppose I’m always suspicious of the word “delay” when it comes to politics. Too often “delay” turns into “never.” One of the more classic examples is the doc fix for medicare, which was intended to lower costs. it was never implemented and every year congress votes to continue to “delay” implementation as costs rise higher and higher.
I can see the wariness, but I don’t fear delay as much as I worry about rushed implementation. I don’t think CCSS is going anywhere, but I think it should be handled with care. Personally, I’m concerned about PARCC. I haven’t seen much in the way of evidence for meaningful ESL and SPED modifications. For ESL, specifically, I think PARCC is more of an assessment of language ability than that of academic mastery. TCAP is the same thing, where simplified english version is a joke. But, then again, I think the majority of education assessment is a farce.
One reason I wanted to see PARCC implemented this year is to give teachers a reason to start preparing for it. Right now its this boogey man out there that nobody knows anything about, but when you start to break it down, its actually not that bad of an assessment (in math at least). I would have like to see an alternative approach to implement PARCC but not use the scores for any evaluation purposes in the first year.
Here’s hoping “delay” does turn into “never”! I’m glad you think that might happen; that gives me hope. I’m going to keep calling my legislators, as I know parents and teachers across the state will continue to do. We tell THEM what to do, not the other way around!
“this” being CCSS and PARCC as is.
Personally I would have liked to see a commitment in the legislation to continued implementation
Thanks also for the thoughts. My reaction was a kind of knee jerk to reading about it in between teaching periods but I appreciate the context you’ve brought regarding the grass roots groups.
Read section 8 of that “bill” (actually, report) you linked to. Doesn’t that scare the crap out of you? How long before what is outlined in section 8 begins to happen in reality? Who is it who came up with the idea for torturing children in those strange ways? I want to know more.
I think you’re being a bit hyperbolic. Legislators can write anything they want into a bill, doesn’t mean it is happening at the present or even will happen. Its probably just language that was included to sway the vote of some overly paranoid legislator or group of legislators.
I certainly hope you’re right.
I don’t see a single benefit of this for teachers. TCAP is NOT common-core aligned in the least. This does NOT give teachers another year to adjust to teaching CCSS-aligned curriculum, because you cannot teach common core if you need to take the TCAP at the end of the year. I’m also really confused about the backlash against the new social studies standards, because those were created by the state of Tennessee itself – which seems to be the crux of the argument against common core, that it’s federal rather than local.
Thats why I would rather that we had gone ahead with PARCC but not used the data for any decisions regarding teachers, schools or districts this first year. A “trial run” if you will.
The benefit is that this is the first step to doing away with the Common Core, and that is the first step to getting rid of the ridiculous and harmful high-stakes testing entirely. Baby steps, Meg!
You’re confusing me. First you say that there’s no benefit to delaying PARCC, but now you’re saying there are benefits? Which is it?
I suppose I don’t see how spending our time teaching group roles and reordering paragraphs instead of reading is a benefit to children.
To what specifically are you referring regarding group roles and reordering paragraphs?
First just as a clarification meghank and I are different people. I don’t think there’s a benefit to delaying parcc because if we take the tcap in its stead ela teachers are forced to take time away from actually teaching kids how to read in order to teach a lot of pointless tcap standards, such as group roles or rearranging paragraphs into the correct order.
Ah, thanks for the clarification! I thought it was strange that Meghan was switching up her moniker… this is what happens when I quickly read/respond to comments on my break