Issues raised at Brookings conference on the new Common Core State Assessments

New assessments Kentucky is betting on are far from a done deal



“If you think focus is a good thing, the Common Core is probably not taking us there.”

Quoted from: Andrew Porter
George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education, University of Pennsylvania
Also a former member of Kentucky’s National Technical Advisory Panel on Assessment and Accountability



The Brookings Institution hosted a conference on October 28, 2010 about the Common Core State Standards and the two national efforts to create uniform tests to assess student performance in all states against those new standards.

As you may recall, Kentucky rushed to adopt the Common Core State Standards early in 2010 – before they were even finalized – in a failed attempt to win Race to the Top money.

I’m still going through the various PowerPoints, speeches and papers from the conference, but it is clear that the proposals for the new Common Core State Assessments are far from complete, required technology does not currently exist and there could be some significant problems ahead.

Andy Porter’s comment above, for example, could imply the Common Core State Assessments are at odds with the intent behind Kentucky’s Senate Bill 1 from 2009. That bill requires a deeper and more focused curriculum to get away from the ineffective “mile wide, inch deep” curricular coverage we have had since KERA was enacted.

Have Kentucky’s educators signed on to a program that won’t comply with SB-1? Stay tuned.



Other speakers besides Porter at the Brookings event included:

Gregory Cizek
Professor of Educational Measurement and Evaluation
University of North Carolina

Gary Phillips
Vice President and Chief Scientist
American Institutes for Research

Roberto Rodríguez
Special Assistant to President Obama for Education
White House Domestic Policy Council

Kris Ellington
Deputy Commissioner, Florida Department of Education
PARCC (One of the consortia developing new Common Core Assessments)

Joseph Willhoft
Assistant Superintendent, Washington State Department of Education
SMARTER (The other consortium working on the new assessments)


Note: This link will give you access to the individual speakers' PowerPoints and papers along with a link to the full audio recording of the conference.


I’m still going through the audio, but here are the approximate start and end times for the various speakers:


00:00 Intros

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3:50 Greg Cizek starts

Cizek in particular points out a number of serious concerns about the missing pieces in the Common Core program.

18:56 Cizek ends

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19:33 Andy Porter starts

29:19 (Porter Quote) “If you think focus is a good thing, the Common Core is probably not taking us there.”

36:18 Porter ends

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36:42 Gary Phillips starts

49:27 Phillips ends

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49:46 Kris Ellington starts

66:48 Ellington ends

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67:15 Joe Willhoft starts

79:16 Willhoft ends

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79:29 Roberto Rodriguez starts

93:53 Rodriguez ends

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Also of interest, as she mentions two other efforts under way to create new assessments for severely learning disabled:

94:31 Statement by Eilena Hern (this may not be the correct spelling of her name) starts

95:49 End Hern’s comments

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I think you will pick up some interesting information from this conference. I hope all the people working on the Common Core Standards and Assessments in Kentucky pay some attention.

Dick Innes