Officials Hide Evidence: After 4 Years of Common Core – Test Scores Plummet
23 November 2013 / 8 Comments
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A Common Core school district – Gulfport, Mississippi – is covering up failing test scores.
At a recent meeting by Superintendent Glen East, parents were told that the test scores of the district had improved dramatically under the implementation of the Common Core curriculum. The Superintendent made his claims regarding dramatic academic improvement of all students by using ONLY the scores of the top 150 students.
In his comments to parents, Mr. East stated,
“This district already had national average ACT scores. We’ve now gone with our top students, our top 150 students, we’ve gone from a 23 average to almost a 25 in over four years. That is not a new ACT, that is the ACT we are currently working with. We’ve improved reading achievement for all students. When I look at that data about how we’ve grown over the past four years and the success we’ve had, if you are in my shoes, you have to celebrate what you are doing. Very Powerful!”
However, a couple of weeks later at a subsequent event, it seems that parents had a chance to research the data that the Superintendent had reported. Upon closer inspection of the data, parents found that the Superintendent completely misrepresented the data, and that the results were worse, not better. They were not simply a little worse, but a lot worse.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should take note. This father does not look much like a white suburban mother. Chris Ashley is the pastor at a local Baptist Church who has a son attending the Gulfport schools. He opens his talk with congratulating the district on the gains they had made. After a brief applause from the audience, he goes into the data.
“According to the Mississippi Department of Education website and their stats, and I can leave them here with Mr. East or all you all can go and get them yourself, everywhere else we are dropping. From 2009 to 2012, almost every grade has dropped in their scores. Not all of them, but overall our test scores have dropped.
“…Greatschools.org you can go there, they’ve pretty much done all the math for you, they tell you the percentages of students that have scored proficient or better. Third grade language arts, we’ve dropped 4%, this is all 2009-2012. Math 3rd grade we’ve dropped 6%. Fourth grade language arts, we’ve went up 8% but we dropped 5% in math. Fifth grade we dropped 5% in language arts and 6% in math. Sixth grade we went up 1% in language arts, we dropped 2% in math. Seventh grade and eighth grade, went up 8 and 4, and eighth grade went up 4 and 12.
“The 5th grade MST test we did well at we up we went up 9 and 17 points.”
Read more:
http://joeforamerica.com/ Read more at
http://minutemennews.com/2013/11/officials-hide-evidence-4-years-common-core-test-scores-plummet/#rQR5jcsLhA2KrjuE.99
