Maryland Tested Kids on Material It No Longer Teaches, Guess What Happened?

Maryland is in the midst of a
shift to the Common Core national education standards, but even
though schools are currently teaching a Core-aligned curriculum,
they are still testing students on the old material.

What happens when public schools teach students one thing and
test them on another? Unsurprisingly, scores plummet.

The Washington Post has more:

Students’ scores had been steadily inching up until 2013,
when there were sharp declines in reading and math scores, a slide
that continued this year. In 2014, overall proficiency scores in
reading and math among elementary students fell 5.2 percentage
points to 80 percent proficiency. Middle-schoolers fared worse —
71.4 percent proficiency, a drop of 6.5 percentage points. Drops in
Montgomery and Prince George’s counties roughly mirrored the state
averages.

During the past two years, the state has shifted its instruction
to prepare for the tests by the Partnership
for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which
are aligned with the Common Core and were recently field-tested in
Maryland.

Note that the differences between the Core-aligned
curriculum and the one it’s replacing are substantial. Key areas of
study are shifted to different grade levels. The approach is
entirely new.

It seems idiotic—cruel, even—to submit kids to mismatched
standardized testing. Legislation was proposed to cancel this
year’s tests, but federal requirements made that unfeasible,

according to The Post.

Of course, some students had the privilege of
serving as unwilling product testers for practice Core-aligned
exams in addition to their regular, misaligned
standardized tests. The
results were not promising.

Kids must be pretty sick of being treated like guinea pigs by
standardized testing makers and mandaters.