Jindal’s Criticism of Common Core Tests Makes No Sense

Help me understand Governor Jindal’s latest attempt for national recognition.  Initially, when Common Core was being adopted by our state, Bobby was so busy traveling throughout the country, self-promoting himself, that he really didn’t pay too much attention to the matter. As the ground swell rose nationally against Common Core, Bobby needed to jump on the band wagon to foster his national image.

Since 90% of Common Core has already been implemented in his state and is fully embraced by his leading appointees, BESE members and the State Superintendent of Education, Bobby has found himself in a pickle because the heavy weights in his party are against Common Cores’ implementation.

So Bobby has come up with the novel approach that the standards might be ok, but the tests designed to measure Common Core Standards success are flawed because he says they are, “ federal, one-size fits all testing.”  I don’t quite understand what that means and, since he’s a Rhodes Scholar, I’m not sure that he even knows what that means.   The tests are designed to assess how our students perform on the standards in comparison to other students nationwide.

Do the terms, NAEP, ITBS, CAT, Stanford Assessment Series, Chicago Early Assessment, GRE, ACT and SAT ring a bell?  All of us, in Louisiana, took one or more of these  assessments sometime during our school career.  They all compared our performance to other students nationwide.

Oh and let’s not forget that it was during Governor Jindal’s term that HE mandated that ALL high school students in the state  take the ACT , a test comparing Louisiana students’ academic performance to others nationally.

Tests for Common Core are being developed by Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, not the feds.  This group is a multi-state consortium working together to develop a common set of K-12 assessments in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers.  Since I can’t find the word “federal” mentioned anywhere, I don’t understand the use of that term  in Jindal’s statement.  These tests will compare our students’ Common Core Standards performance with others throughout the nation, just like the ones mentioned above compare the academic performance among students nationwide.  So Bobby’s “one-size fits all testing” is  also a mystery to me.

But Bobby now claims that THIS national comparison assessment is no good, not based upon any item analysis as to the appropriateness of the test items, but simply that state developed assessments would be better.  State developed assessments are permitted to be used with the Common Core Standards, but past evidence falls to support the notion that this would lead to success for Louisiana students, and Governor Jindal  should know this.

We went that route for over 20 years with something known as LEAP and most of our students (68%) were highly successful according to measurement by our state assessment tests.

However, after all these years of using these tests, which showed continual improvement, when our  students were assessed  by the most recent  NATIONAL assessment, NAEP, which  Jindal hasn’t  complained about, our 4^th and 8^th grade students were either  tied for 48^th place or finished dead last in reading and math skills out of the 50 states tested.   Do you really want to trust your child’s educational future again to state assessment tests?  Haven’t these done enough damage?

If our governor really took the time to understand the issues involved with Common Core and its assessment, he might refrain from ‘shoot from the hip’ statements which really add little to the discussion of the entire paradigm.  His present protest doesn’t logically make sense and is simply a desperate attempt to save face with his political pundits.   He so aptly fits the old quote from Mark Twain-“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.”