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n a frank and stunning letter to parents, eight school principals from around the state of New York have expressed deep concerns about the validity and usefulness of new Common Core-aligned tests foisted on all public-school children in grades three through eight.The multi-million-dollar battery of high-stakes standardized tests has been designed by Pearson, a multinational education conglomerate, reports The Washington Post.In their lengthy letter, the group of principals warns that many children have experienced viscerally negative responses to the high-stakes tests. We know that many children cried during or after testing, and others vomited or lost control of their bowels or bladders. Others simply gave up. One teacher reported that a student kept banging his head on the desk, and wrote, ‘This is too hard,’ and ‘I can’t do this,’ throughout his test booklet.The principals also observe that students are spending considerably more time taking standardized tests this year. New York third-graders, for example, are now spending 163 percent more time filling in bubbles thanks to Common Core.In addition, the principals say the tests are too long and contain too many experimental questions which don’t count toward a student’s score. “We know that many students were unable to complete the tests in the allotted time,” they say. They point out that it’s hard to know if students don’t know the answers to all the scored questions, or if they just aren’t getting to them in time.On top of that, a lot of the test questions are quite simply awful. “We know that many teachers and principals could not agree on the correct answers to ambiguous questions,” the principals complain.
I truly do not understand how any parent can support this.
