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As Common Core testing results trickle in, initial goals unfulfilled

LOS ANGELES –  Results for some of the states that participated in Common Core-aligned testing for the first time this spring are out, with overall scores higher than expected though still below what many parents may be accustomed to seeing.

Full or preliminary scores have been released for Connecticut, Idaho, Missouri, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. They all participated in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two groups of states awarded $330 million by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010 to develop exams to test students on the Common Core state standards in math and English language arts.
Scores in four other states that developed their own exams tied to the standards have been released. The second testing group, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is still setting benchmarks for each performance level and has not released any results.
Even when all the results are available, it will not be possible to compare student performance across a majority of states, one of Common Core's fundamental goals.
What began as an effort to increase transparency and allow parents and school leaders to assess performance nationwide has largely unraveled, chiefly because states are dropping out of the two testing groups and creating their own exams.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told state leaders in 2010 that the new tests would "help put an end to the insidious practice of establishing 50 different goal posts for educational success."
"In the years ahead, a child in Mississippi will be measured against the same standard of success as a child in Massachusetts," Duncan said.
Massachusetts and Mississippi students did take the PARCC exam this year. But Mississippi's Board of Education has voted to withdraw from the consortium for all future exams.
"The whole idea of Common Core was to bring students and schools under a common definition of what success is," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And Common Core is not going to have that. One of its fundamental arguments has been knocked out from under it."
No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush's signature education law, requires states to test students each year in math and reading in grades three to eight and again in high school. Congress has been debating ways to overhaul the law. The House and Senate have approved differing versions this summer that would maintain the testing requirement but let states decide how to use the results.
The Common Core-aligned tests fulfill the federal requirement, yet are significantly different from the exam that students are accustomed to taking.
Rather than paper-and-pencil multiple choice tests, the new exams are designed to be taken by tablet or computer. Instead of being given a selection of answers to choose, students must show how they got their answer. Answer correctly and get a more difficult question. Answer incorrectly, get an easier one.
Field tests administered last year indicated that a majority of students would not score as proficient in math and reading on the tests. So this summer, states have braced for the results, meeting with parents and principals to explain why the results will be different.
At Los Angeles Unified School District, Cynthia Lim, executive director of the Office of Data and Accountability, said the preliminary results received by the nation's second largest district are "lower than what people are used to seeing." District officials are consulting with school leaders about how to explain to parents and students that new test results should not be compared with old ones.
"I think we are getting richer information about student learning," she said.
Overall, the statewide scores that have been released are not as stark as first predicted, though they do show that vast numbers of students do not qualify as proficient in math or reading.
In Idaho, nearly 50 percent or more of students tested were proficient or above in English language arts. The results were lower for math: less than 40 percent were proficient in five grade levels. In Washington, about half of students across the state earned proficient scores. In Vermont, English proficiency scores hovered below 60 percent and dipped to as low as 37 percent in math.
States using the Smarter Balanced tests are using the same cut scores but different descriptors. What is "below basic" in one state might be "slightly unprepared" in another.
Initially, Duncan said the department would ask the two consortia to collaborate and make results comparable. But while the Smarter Balanced test has four achievement levels, the PARCC exam will have five.
When the testing groups were created, PARCC was a coalition of 26 states and Smarter Balanced 31; some states belonged to both. This year, 11 states and the District of Columbia took PARCC exams. Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio have since decided to withdraw from the exams. Eighteen states participated in the Smarter Balanced test this year. Of those, three states have since decided to abandon one or all of the grade level tests.
"It's always disappointing to have a state drop out," said Kelli Gauthier, a spokeswoman for Smarter Balanced. "But we feel really confident in the group that we have."
Sarah Potter, communications coordinator for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the frequent changes in which test will be given and what students will be tested on has frustrated teachers and parents. The state participated in Smarter Balanced this spring but lawmakers have appropriated $7 million to develop a new state-based assessment plan.
"We are losing that that state-to-state comparability after this year, unfortunately," Potter said. "But our Legislature has said we should have Missouri standards so that is the route we are taking."
Aside from the defections, the exams have also experienced from technical glitches and an opt-out movement that surfaced this spring. Results in Nevada, Montana and North Dakota were hit with widespread technical problems; Nevada counted last year's scores a total loss.
In Oregon, slightly more than 95 percent of students took the exam, just making the federal requirement for participation. For black and special education students, as well as some districts, the requirement was not met, meaning the state could potentially lose federal funds.
Most states have not been able to release test scores before the start of classes, a delay that was expected in the exam's first year, but nonetheless frustrating for some teachers and parents.
"From a high school senior's perspective, it's gotta be really tough," said Renata Witte, president of the New Mexico PTA. "You want to get those college applications in and you need this information to complete them."

O'Malley facing legal questions about buying governor's mansion furnishings at 'junk' prices

Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley is facing questions about whether he violated state ethics rules when buying furniture from the governor’s mansion at cut-rate prices before his departure.

A Maryland assistant attorney general on Friday asked a state ethics commission to rule on whether O’Malley’s purchases violated rules on state property, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun, which first reported the story.
O'Malley and his wife, Catherine O'Malley, reportedly paid $9,638 for 54 pieces of furniture that originally cost taxpayers $62,000.
The O’Malley administration’s Department of General Services sold the items after declaring them "junk." But an agency rule prohibits the preferential sale of state property to government officials, according to the paper.
The agency also allegedly permitted the sale without seeking bids or notifying the public that the items were for sale.
O’Malley and his wife, a Baltimore District Court judge, reportedly earned a combined $270,000 in state salaries last year.
Representatives for O'Malley, who retired as governor in January because of term limits, said he followed proper procedures and that the furniture was authorized to be discarded.
Among the purchased items were armoires, beds, chairs, desks, lamps, mirrors, ottomans and tables, according to The Sun, in a remarkably detailed, 1,596-word story.
The furniture was used in the residential sections of the mansion, not the public areas. But the sum of the items reportedly was essentially equal to most of the mansion’s taxpayer-purchased furnishings.
The depreciation formula for the items was devised by the Annapolis Capital Complex.
According to the inventory list, the O'Malleys paid $449 for a leather couch that the state bought in 2007 for $2,247; $739 for an armoire that the state paid $3,695 for in 2007; and $764 for a second armoire that the state paid $3,822 for in 2007.
John Griffin, O'Malley's former chief of staff, who spoke on behalf of the former governor, told The Sun that he thinks proper procedure was followed.
Former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. faced similar scrutiny after purchasing furniture when he left office in 2008, but to a lesser extent. He paid the state $992 for 21 furnishings that had cost the state $9,904.
Ehrlich, a Republican, purchased mostly low-cost linens, mattresses, pillows, lamps and bunk beds used by his two sons, at prices also set a depreciation formula.

Democrats end summer meeting with no resolution to support Obama's Iran deal

The Democratic National Committee reportedly failed this weekend to pass a resolution supporting President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, with Congress set to vote on the issue as early as next week.

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the committee chairwoman, prevented the resolution from being considered at the group’s summer meeting this weekend in Minneapolis, sources told The Washington Post, which first reported the story.
Obama and his White House team have worked diligently to get enough Capitol Hill votes for the resolution to pass, amid strong opposition from the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
Vice President Biden, in fact, spoke with DNC members on a conference call Wednesday to help garner support. And the group failing to pass such a resolution is largely being considered at setback for what would likely become Obama’s signature foreign policy victory.
Some congressional Democrats who are Jewish also oppose the deal, fearing it will put Israel at greater risk of attack by neighbor and bitter rival Iran. Among them is New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is expected to become the next Senate Democratic leader.
If the deal is approved, the United States and five other world powers would lift billions of dollars in crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for the rogue nation curtailing its nuclear-development program.
The House and Senate are expected to have enough votes to pass a resolution of disapproval for the deal. However, Obama will almost assuredly veto the resolution, and neither chamber is projected to have the two-thirds majority needed to override the presidential veto.
The Post reports two conflicting arguments about why perhaps members didn’t vote on the resolution -- that procedural issues prevented a vote or it was thwarted by Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish and whose south Florida district has many Jewish voters.
No such proposal was drafted in advance of the meeting, and the one presented failed to qualify as an emergency procedure, The Post reported, according to sources.
Still, at least 160 committee members signed an alternative “Special Letter to the President" in which they pledged their support for Obama's leadership in the negotiations and agreed that placing strict limits on Iran's nuclear program is “an important victory for diplomacy.”
The letter was prepared by James Zogby, the co-chairman of the group's Resolutions Committee.
Zogby and Christine Pelosi, chairwoman of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus, made a blog post Saturday on the Huffington Post website in which they listed the names of those who have so far signed the letter.
Wasserman Schultz, who has not said whether she will vote in favor of the Iran agreement, was not listed among those who signed the letter.
If Wasserman Schultz indeed blocked the vote, this would not be the first time she has faced criticism about putting her political future ahead of the party’s.
As far back as 2012, Obama political advisers had purportedly taken steps to replace Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman, and her relationship with the White House has since been strained.

Ohio lawmakers slam Obama plans to rename Mt. McKinley 'Denali' during Alaska trip

Ohio lawmakers reacted angrily Sunday to the White House's announcement that President Obama would formally rename Alaska's Mt. McKinley — North America's highest peak — "Denali" during his trip to The Last Frontier this week.

"Mount McKinley ... has held the name of our nation's 25th President for over 100 years," Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, said in a statement. "This landmark is a testament to his countless years of service to our country." Gibbs also described Obama's action as "constitutional overreach", saying that an act of Congress was required to rename the mountain because a law formally naming it after McKinley was passed in 1917.
"This political stunt is insulting to all Ohioans, and I will be working with the House Committee on Natural Resources to determine what can be done to prevent this action," Gibbs said.
The Ohio delegation's disappointment at the decision cut across party lines.
"We must retain this national landmark's name in order to honor the legacy of this great American president and patriot," Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, whose district includes McKinley's hometown of Niles, in eastern Ohio.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, also blasted the decision as "yet another example of the President going around Congress", while House Speaker John Boehner said the naming of the mountain after McKinley was "a testament to [the 25th president's] great legacy .. I am deeply disappointed in this decision.
The state of Alaska has had a standing request to change the name to "Denali"  — a native Athabascan word meaning "the high one"  — dating back to 1975, when the legislature passed a resolution and then-Gov. Jay Hammond appealed to the federal government.
But those efforts and legislation in Congress have been stymied by members of Ohio's congressional delegation. Even when Mount McKinley National Park was renamed Denali National Park in 1980, the federal government retained Mount McKinley as the name of the actual peak, which rises 20,320 feet above sea level.
"With our own sense of reverence for this place, we are officially renaming the mountain Denali in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives and the strong support of the people of Alaska," said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
The White House cited Jewell's authority to change the name, and Jewell issued a secretarial order officially changing it to Denali. The Interior Department said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had been deferring to Congress since 1977, and cited a 1947 law that allows the Interior Department to change names unilaterally when the board fails to act "within a reasonable time." The board shares responsibility with the Interior Department for naming such landmarks.
In 1896, a prospector in the mountains of central Alaska named the range after William McKinley upon learning that he had been nominated as a candidate for U.S. president.
McKinley became the country’s 25th president and was assassinated in 1901, six months into his second term. The 20,000-foot-tall peak had been previously known as Denali -- generally believed to be central to the Athabascan tribe's creation story and the site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska natives, according to the White House.
Denali also is an Athabascan word meaning "the high one" and is widely used across the state today, according to the White House.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who had pushed legislation for years to change the name, said Alaskans were "honored" to recognize the mountain as Denali.
"I'd like to thank the president for working with us to achieve this significant change to show honor, respect, and gratitude to the Athabascan people of Alaska," Murkowski said in a video message recorded atop the mountain's Ruth Glacier, with cloudy snow-capped peaks behind her.
Obama will not personally visit the peak during his stay in Alaska, which runs through Wednesday. He'll spend much of the trip in Anchorage, south of the peak, where he will attend a State Department-sponsored meeting on climate change, titled GLACIER/Global Leadership in the Arctic Conference.
The conference will bring together foreign ministers of Arctic nations and key non-Arctic states with scientists, policymakers and stakeholders from Alaska and the Arctic, the White House said.
“The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and is experiencing the consequences,” the White House also said Sunday.
Supporters of the global warming theory say those changes include higher average temperatures and less winter sea ice, which is allowing for heavy storm surges that the sea ice once kept at bay, the White House said.
On Monday, Obama is scheduled to meet with leaders from the Alaska native community along with Gov. Bill Walker, Lt. Governor Byron Mallott and Murkowski to discuss ways to strengthen cooperation between the federal government and Alaska native tribes. Among the issues scheduled to be discussed is management strategies for fish and wildlife.