I had the pleasure of attending Fordham-Ohio's conference on standards on Monday. We'll post the video from the conference soon but I just wanted to highlight an issue raised in the panel titled, "Current Efforts to Create National Standards." Gene Wilhoit, executive director of CCSSO and Michael Cohen, President of Achieve, discussed the Common Core Standards in a panel moderated by Fordham President Chester Finn. Checker asked if they thought the assessments that will presumably be developed and eventually tied to the "college-and-career ready" standards would specify "cut scores."?? Wilhoit said yes; in fact, he thinks the whole endeavor will lose credibility if the assessment fails to do so. Then Cohen chimed in and said that there's a possibility that states could set a "graduating bar" and a "college-ready bar" at least at the beginning. Both felt that if a state decided to grant a diploma to a student who had not met a certain standard, they ought to "note that."
I guess this is reasonable. But the whole discussion illustrated for me the complexity of what we're about to ask states to do. Most states already have in place a tiered diploma system. Virginia, for instance, has FIVE diplomas (in addition to the GED): the standard, advanced studies, modified standard, special, and general achievement diploma. Unfortunately, all of these diplomas boil down to how many course credits students receive and/or their disability status. If we devise a national test with cut scores that equate to college readiness (which will apparently mean that a student can expect to perform at the "C-level" or better in a first-year credit bearing college course), this will be a vast improvement over the current diploma-equals-seat-time system. But what other cut score-designations will states be allowed to layer onto the "national metric," [my words] if any? And what implications will these decisions have on graduation rates? Most everyone supports re-thinking how and why we graduate students. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the issues that need to be considered regarding the real possibility of new common standards and tests. It's fine to have validation committees, feedback committees, advisory committees, and all the rest, but does a committee exist for brainstorming all of the issues that states, schools, and local leaders will need to ask themselves to make "participation" in this endeavor really mean something? And is there a committee to answer their queries?
Sign me up (for the former, that is).
