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Common Core Refusal Expands Nationwide

Common Core Refusal Expands Nationwide

States across the nation are continuing to adjust their adoption of Common Core standards or are declining administration of Common Core exams. 

School districts from New Hampshire to Oregon are "revolting against the coming Common core tests" said an article on Politico.com.

Even as political leaders in both red and blue states continue to back away from the standards — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the latest example — the hottest battles have shifted to the local level, where education officials are staging public revolts against state and federal mandates to administer Common Core exams," the article said.

In Chicago, Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett announced "she did not want students in the nation’s third-largest district to take the federally funded PARCC exam, which will debut next spring in 11 states, including Illinois."

"Since George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind in 2002, federal law has required states to give all public school students in grades three through eight the same exams, so their math and language skills could be measured against a common yardstick," the article said. "The Obama administration has long hoped that Common Core would create a national yardstick, so children in Massachusetts could be compared to their peers in Mississippi." The "uprisings" are extending into Colorado, where a large suburban school is "pressing to be excused from the PARCC exam, calling it a “one-size-fits-all” approach that’s less rigorous than its students deserve," according to Politico. "A second, smaller Colorado district has also asked the state to exempt most of its students from the exam."

Meanwhile, "rural districts across the country are complaining that they don’t have the bandwidth or the computers needed to administer the most widely used Common Core exams, known as PARCC and Smarter Balanced," said the article.

“We should be completely prepared for lots of folks to get cold feet starting now,” said Andy Smarick, a policy analyst at Bellwether Education Partners. "States that have already moved to Common Core tests have seen student scores plunge and parent protests soar — and as the spring testing season creeps closer, similar outcomes are staring our leaders in the face in states from coast to coast."

In Massachusetts, the article said, '"roughly half of students will take the Common Core PARCC tests in the spring; the rest will continue to take the state's own standardized tests." 

Read the full story.

Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor

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