Sunday, April 21, 2013

Common Core in California

I received permission from the author to post the following here:
Yesterday, I found sample CCSS test questions. They seemed VERY similar to our current standardized tests, just with bells and whistles. Now, gasp, the domain has been removed. Perhaps "they" are getting wind of backlash, or, want to keep everything secret.

Either way, bells and whistles don't make things better, its trickery. The questions were not of more rigor, just more computer based "fun" methods set to confuse students. Keypad/calculator looking icons to type in an answer in some, bubble-in the answer in others, drag this and that here and there to answer this, highlight that.

Here's where I got the link; the sample items and performance task portion. Its all California based but CCSS is national so it applies to most every state. http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sa/smarterbalanced.asp
We are so screwed.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:45 PM

    This may be the case for some of the sample problems shown, but I felt that other problems did inject a bit more rigor. For example:

    A circle has its center at (6, 7) and goes through the point (1, 4). A second circle is tangent to the first circle at the point (1, 4) and has one-fourth the area. What are the coordinates for the center of the second circle? Show your work or explain how you found your answer.

    This was one of the free response questions given. Not difficult at all, however I believe it requires fluency beyond what students need to demonstrate on the current California Geometry CST exam. No?

    ReplyDelete