Florida is the only state not officially affiliated with the controversial Common Core State Standards with academic standards just as stringent as the National Assessment of Educational Progress test’s “proficient” level, according to a new survey.
The survey, conducted by the American Institutes for Research (the testing company administering the Florida Standards Assessment test each year), found that only Florida had college-ready standards as rigorous as the NAEP “proficient” level for English and mathematics in grades 4 and 8.
Using data from state cut scores/achievement levels and comparing it to the NAEP cut scores, AIR researcher Gary Phillips researched the benchmarks for around four months and found Florida’s cut scores compare closely to the NAEP test’s cut scores. The study did not look into specific content of Common Core nor did it evaluate the quality of standards, only the achievement levels of states and how they compared to NAEP.
The NAEP test is widely considered to be one of the more rigorous modern assessments, taken by representatives from across the country every two years. These “benchmarks” of proficiency measure what students need to know before they head off to college and beyond.
But before Common Core, there wasn’t an exact set of similar standards among the 50 states, meaning there was a wide discrepancy between scores and standards..
“Prior to the advent of the Common Core, I used to say that 50 states going in 50 different directions is not a strategy for national success in a globally competitive world,” said Gary Phillips, the report’s author and an AIR vice president and Institute Fellow.
To solve the problem of the varying standards, the National Governors Association gathered in Washington, D.C. in 2009 with a goal of creating a set of uniform education standards which would clarify what students needed to know before entering college and the workforce. The NGA called the standards “Common Core.”
In 2010, the standards were released, and two assessment tests PARCC and SmarterBalanced were introduced to measure student achievement.
Many states have raised their standards with the advent of Common Core, but Phillips told Sunshine State News some of them haven’t made it to home plate for student achievement just yet.
“[Those states] still aren’t all the way up to the proficient level [on the NAEP score],” he explained.
In recent years, Common Core has come under intense scrutiny from teachers, parents and members of the public who claim a “one size fits all” method of teaching isn’t the right way to push students towards success. Because of this, some states have shied away from the standards as well as PARCC and SmarterBalanced.
Florida was one of the states which broke away from Common Core and PARCC, creating its own “Florida Standards” (although the state’s standards still closely align with Common Core) and the Florida Standards Assessment.
According to the report, Florida was the only state with five achievement levels for which Level 4 maps to the NAEP proficient level in both English Language Arts for grades 4 and 8 as well as mathematics in grades 4 and 8.
Phillips told Sunshine State News about 80 percent of Common Core Standards and NAEP standards overlap, which would indicate the closer an assessment aligns to CCSS, the closer it will align to NAEP standards.
Despite the report’s apparent good news for Florida, it does indicate caveats to the findings. The report warns against calling NAEP results the “gold standard” for predicting student success.
“No evidence has been presented by NAEP that the proficient standards used in grades 4 and 8 predicts college success,” reads the report.
The full study results, including methodology, are attached below.
Reach reporter Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
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