Teachers favor Common Core, oppose high stakes

A Gallup poll released last week shows that the large majority of US public school teachers react positively to the primary goal of the Common Core: to have all states use the same set of academic standards for reading, writing and math in kindergarten through high school.

However, this positive reaction fades when the topic turns to using computerized tests to measure student performance (27%) and linking those test scores to teacher evaluations (9%).

The computed margin of error is ±5 percent.

But while general support for the Common Core is in the majority, so is agreement with four key points in favor of the standards and four key points opposed to them. The majority of public school teachers agreed with each of these statements:

1. The Common Core enables teachers to better educate students who move from different states.
2. The standards help colleges and professional development programs prepare teachers for the classroom.
3. The standards provide a better assessment of student learning than previous testing did.
4. The standards help ensure all students get the same high-quality education, regardless of where they live.
5. The Common Core takes too much control away from teachers of how they conduct their own lessons.
6. The standards result in students receiving too little time for recess, art, and music.
7. The testing used to monitor student progress takes too much time away from teaching.
8. Linking teacher evaluations to student test scores is unfair to teachers.

Clearly, teachers are an agreeable lot. Or, it could be, as Maeve Ward, senior program officer, US Policy and Advocacy Team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, suggests, that teachers “want two criteria in the components of their evaluations: multiple measures and actionable feedback. Few teachers have real experience with Common Core-aligned assessments because states are just starting to replace their old bubble tests with these new tests that measure real-world skills like problem solving and critical thinking. Teachers need time to familiarize themselves with the standards and the assessments and see how they can provide that actionable feedback.”

I would agree with Ms Ward if only the new tests did measure problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. But they do not. The tests are “next-generation” only in that they are administered on computer and can ask questions in different formats from the multiple-choice questions students have grown accustomed to under No Child Left Behind. Any feedback from the assessments will not come with a fine enough granularity to be of any use to teachers in modifying their lessons.