Common national standards and standardized tests

What better way to start the summer than thinking about math tests. New standards are coming on line, assessments are being developed to replace CSAP and the teacher evaluation process is changing. Staying informed about these changes and how they will impact education is essential.

This link is to a statement from the president of the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics on Common Core State Standards and how they will be assessed.   http://www.nctm.org/about/content.aspx?id=30169



This is a link to the conference report by the Joint Task Force on the Common Core Standards that is referenced in the article.   http://www.mathismore.net/resources/MovingForward/MFT_Final_Report.pdf

In my opinion, some of the key recommendations in the report:

Recommendation 1.: Ensure the standards for mathematical practice are embedded within the assessments.  

Recommendation 4.: Assist  in the creation of scoring categories, subscores on constructs, and tagging systems to ensure valid information is being reported to teachers, parents, and students.

Recommendation 5.: Utilize research based strategies to investigate approaches to assessment item development.

Recommendation 6.: Support long term sustainability of assessments and an evidence based approach to appropriate revisions of the assessments.

Recommendation 9.: Develop and apply a means of accurately describing curricular emphasis and alignment in existing curricular/instructional materials with regard to the standards for mathematical practice and the content standards. Engage the full range of curriculum developers in alignment discussions, and if materials are not
well aligned, revise them.

Recommendation 16.: Request and lobby for policy level changes to slow the timeline and process of implementing the assessments, given the complexity of the task.

Overall, the report from the Joint Task Force seems carefully thought out and the suggestions are ones that would help to make positive changes. Here's hoping that is the case.

When will I ever need this?

When will I ever need this? One of the most often asked questions in math class. Sometimes it is a genuine question but students often don't want to hear the answer, no matter what it is. This article makes a very good argument that "application problems" taught in math class really don't apply to much of anything, but learning math is still essential. It is a means to something much more fundamental than gaining job skills.

What Is Mathematics For?

http://www.ams.org/notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf