More on the Common Core Exam

So here is the breakdown of how the District explains my problem with the scoring in the math portion of our Common Core Exam.

Math

Emergent                      Approaches                   Meets

.00-120.49                  120.50-161.49                161.50-169.00

Those are points possible on the test and how they broke them down.

Counting to 100 has a point value of – 101 (since we start at zero)

Skip counting to 100 from 0 equals - 11 points

Writing numbers from 0-21 equals - 21 points

Counting objects – 10 points

Comparing numbers - 5 points

Addition and subtraction -  5 points (listen to a number story, and correctly write a number sentence and do the math)

Recognise and name 2 and 3 D objects in the environment.  -8 points

 Use correct terms to describe objects location - 8 points

Clearly someone with a math background did not decide how to score this test.  Do they REALLY want to disproportionately value rote counting that much over the other standards?  Counting by ones to 100 and skip counting by 10′s to 100 is 122 of the points or 72% of all possible points.  Two of the eight standards assessed account for 72% of the score.  That’s not right.  Next year I should allocate 72% of my math time to those two standards.

The girl in my previous post scored a total of 119 points because of only counting to 49.  She would still have had to count to 92 to meet the standard.  In my experience, if they can count to 92, they can count to 100.

And they scored it differently for ELA .  There were 15 standards evaluated in ELA.  If a student got maximum points on all standards except words, and they met the standard with words at 50 words they would earn 179 points.  If they miss 7.51 points out of 179 points, they drop from Meeting the Standard to Approaches the Standard.  That is such a narrow margin.

They gave us a list of 100 high frequency words for the kids to learn.  If they learned 49 they approach the Standard,  50 words they meet the standard, 51 or higher, they exceed the Standard.  Knowing the extra words can really skew the result of the ELA portion of the test.

Common Core State Standards and Merit Pay

Our district, along with the rest of the country, is inching towards merit pay.  One of the steps they have put in place this year is a Common Core State Standard assessment.  In kindergarten, since there is no baseline data, we have to administer the assessment four times a year.  Once at the very beginning of the year, the first week, before we even have routines and procedures down.  Then we do it three more times at the end of each grading period.   Testing.

We have just finished up the final, end of year CCSS exam.  Our principal wanted us to pull a report from the program where we record our results.  The data became available over the weekend and I looked at it.  Basically, the “Big Picture” report takes all of the math standard results, and all of the ELA results and condenses them into one math “grade” and one ELA “grade”.  The grades are, Emergent, Approaches, Meets, and Exceeds.

Fine,  except for this, and it’s only one example.  I have one little girl, who “meets” the standard on EVERY Common Core State Standard in math except one.  She can’t count to 100 yet,  she  only counted to 49.  She is rated as Emergent on this one standard.  Eight standards tested, 7 out of 8 meeting the standards but that’s not enough.  Because she was rated Emergent on this ONE standard, she is rated Emergent on ALL of math.  That’s not right.

In reading, they have to know 50 out of 100 sight words to meet the standard, 49 is approaching the standard, 50 meets the standard, and 51 exceeds.  There is no wiggle room.  Knowing 35 words is still Emergent and knowing 35 words gets the same rating as knowing 6 words.

Six Weeks Until School is Over

And we started the end of the year testing for the Common Core State Standards.  Why open the testing window so early?  I know it will take me forever to do it all, but SIX WEEKS!   I have to keep reminding myself that I have to individually test each kid on 100 sight words, etc, etc.  But still!

I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged as much this year, but I decided I wasn’t going to fill this blog with negativity.  And it’s hard.  I really don’t like where we are at as teachers right now.  And it isn’t just my district.  I follow my education blogs on Google Reader and I have noticed that many of the educators I follow aren’t posting as much lately as well.

On the plus side, from what little testing I’ve managed to do so far, my kids have made amazing progress.  I love this time of the year in kindergarten.  Most of them are really starting to put all of the dots together.  I can see amazing progress, even in my very low kids.  I have to remind myself that they only look really bad when compared to the high ones.  As far as the standards go, they are still low, but they have made great progress, especially for kids that knew no English at the beginning of the year.  Our district has a list of 100 high frequency words for kindergarten and they want them to know at least 50 of them.  Our Trophies Reading program used to have about 32 or so words, so we have had to step it up a bit this year.   My highest readers are reading on a Second Grade level.  I had two girls fighting over an Amelia Bedelia book today, it had a reading level of 2.3, and they could read it.

Oh, and then there is the kid that moved in from out-of-state a month ago and has less than 60 days in the classroom for all year to date.  I tested him on the alphabet and he knew the letter “O” and a few sounds.  No words.  I don’t “get” some parents.

Anyway, I’m still alive.  My wife thinks I should move to 1st grade and smaller class sizes.  But it’s also smaller rooms, different curriculum to learn, etc.

End of the Year Dibels Scores

For the end of the year we do the Letter Naming Fluency,  the Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, and the Nonsense Word Fluency Assessments in Dibels.  I don’t know what it is about this year, but my kids have performed mediocre at best on the Letter Naming Fluency, while generally knocking the other two out of the ball park.  Almost every kid has performed very well on the Phoneme Segmentation, and Nonsense Word items but they just can’t seem to name letters fast.  I just don’t get why they can’t name the letters with automaticity.  And it’s not just my class, all the kindergarten teachers at my school have noticed the same thing this year.