NJASK UPDATED AS PART OF ONGOING TRANSITION TO COMMON CORE
Revised middle-school math exams alter profile of what students need to know in grades 6 to 8
The move to online testing in 2015 may have grabbed most of the attention, but the state’s NJASK exams will also be seeing some more changes this spring, as the current elementary and middle school tests are brought into line with the Common Core State Standards.
The state has already started the phase-in of the new national standards, revising NJASK’s grades 3-8 language arts and grades 3-5 math sections. But it left intact the grades 6-8 math exams while the younger students had the necessary instruction.
Now it’s the turn of the middle-school math tests. Some content areas will be moved entirely to different grades. Ratios and relationships, for example, will be addressed in grades 6 and 7; mathematical functions more heavily weighted in grade 8.
“The idea was that the scaffolding of content was special for math, so we staged that implementation,” said Bari Erlichson, assistant education commissioner in charge of the testing. (Mooney/NJSpotlight)
“Scaffolding” of content. Ugh. More meaningless terminology minted and crapped out by Ed. Doctorates and Pearson Publishers for the benefit of the low-information taxpayer.
This too shall pass.
Knowledge and actual education is not important as long as the kids test well
Kids failing to perform when exposed to objectively worthwhile testing standards is not important as long as we manage to indoctrinate them on the latest and greatest fad being foisted upon us by the teachers’ colleges…. Listen, the Common Core Curriculum is the result of an effort to denude our children’s education of actual substantive content in important academic subjects. Changing the testing standards to correspond with the Common Core Curriculum is only lowering the testing standards to match the new dumbed-down curriculum. Comparing the old NJ Ask test results with the new Common Core test results will be impossible.