The results of the 2011-2012 Kentucky Performance Rating of Education Progress (K-PREP) test have recently been released, raising questions about the upcoming nationwide transition to tests geared toward the Common Core standards.
Kentucky, in 2010, was the first state to officially adopt an educational curriculum determined by the Common Core Standards for English/Language Arts and Math. While the official tests, created by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, based on this curriculum will not be ready for school systems to use until 2014-2015, Kentucky’s K-PREP, for students from grades 3-8, is recognized as one directly aligned with the Common Core standards, and therefore representative of what may happen in other states in the future. Gene Wilhoit, former education commissioner of Kentucky and current executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers that helped create the Common Core initiative, offered his prediction: “What you’re seeing in Kentucky is a predictor of what you’re going to see in the other states, as the assessments roll out next year and the year after.” 46 out of 50 states have adopted the Common Core standards for English, and 45 out of 50 have adopted them for math.
The results of these recently released test scores indicate that the expected drop in scores was less than had been anticipated by Kentucky officials, but may still be large enough to raise public concern, for which the state of Kentucky has been actively preparing. In some cases the drop was as large as a roughly one-third lower in terms of students scoring as “proficient or higher” than for the previous year of state testing. The highest drops in test scores were for elementary school students, followed by middle school, and high school students. Douglas McRae, a retired assessment designer who helped build California’s testing system, remained calm concerning the test results: “When you change the measure, change the tests, then you interrupt the continuity of trend data over time. That’s the fundamental thing that happens.” State officials will continue to monitor test results in the coming years. As students, teachers, and administrators adjust to the new curriculum, scores should become more normative and therefore indicate more about actual proficiency of students in English and math.
Statistics and a full article concerning the K-PREP results can be found at http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/02/11standards.h32.html?tkn=SXMF6AI69l7li%2FKjcD8urFxLFx7CkXNZz4RW&cmp=clp-edweek
