The National Assessment of Educational Progress, as the tests are formally known, ranked fourth graders in only five states, plus Washington, D.C., at as low a level of math proficiency as California’s.

The latest round of nationwide fourth and eighth grade math and reading tests yielded disappointing results. Stacked up against other states, California hovered at the lower end of the scale. “Across California, scores stagnated since 2013 at all levels — there were some small dips, which were not statistically significant,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Laying blame

Although national and state officials alike cautioned that the trouble was hard to pinpoint, project, or trace back to root causes, some pointed the finger at the changes in testing brought on by this year’s shift toward compliance with the new Common Core Standards. “The NAEP tests aren’t completely aligned with the Common Core State Standards,” however, as state Department of Education spokesman Bill Ainsworth informed the Mercury News via email. “Consequently, we do not believe they are a good measure of California students’ progress.”

But the test results did also reveal significant racial and ethnic divergences. This year, added the Times, “between a quarter and a third of the state’s students performed at or above proficiency on the various tests; in fourth-grade reading, 4 out of 10 students were deemed to be below basic. And, fewer than 1 in 5 students of color or low-income students met or exceeded proficiency on any test.” What’s more, the paper noted, over the past three years, “California’s Latino students’ scores decreased slightly, but were flat in fourth-grade reading.”

For analysts focused on comparative racial test performance, the results turned back the clock. According to Education Week, “performance gaps between black, Hispanic and white students, in reading remained as wide in 2015 as they were in 1998. In math,” however, “the gap between black and white fourth-grade students has narrowed by about 10 points since 2000.”

Some analysts shied away from drawing too strong an inference even along lines of race. Brookings Institution senior fellow Tom Loveless told Education Week that “California’s demographics — including nearly 1.4 million students classified as English language learners — make it difficult to pinpoint the impact of the state’s school system versus other social and economic factors on results. In three of the state’s largest school districts — Fresno, Los Angeles and San Diego — achievement gaps between black, Hispanic, and white students have remained largely unchanged or even widened.”

Racial controversy

The intersection of race and education has recently occupied central, contested ground in California. In the wake of the Vergara case, which alleged civil rights violations against minority students as a consequence of protective teachers’ union policies, the political stakes have been raised in the debate over which disparities matter most and how they are to be corrected.

The controversy has magnified the significance of studies plowing similar ground. As Inside Higher Ed reported, a long-term analysis of SAT scores, released by the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, showed that “race and ethnicity have become stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels,” at least “among applicants to the University of California’s campuses.” The study’s author, Saul Geiser, concluded that admissions committees should offset the impact of the SAT by taking affirmative action criteria into account.

“Californians trust their public school teachers and want to spend more money supporting public schools, according to a recent poll. […] California voters also say they oppose the state’s strong tenure laws and believe that all public school teachers should be held accountable through regular performance evaluations, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll, released this week.”

The results were seen by analysts as a danger sign for teachers unions, which have long tied the success of public education to their own strength. A growing consensus that the two have fallen out of sync would make it harder for unions to maintain the status quo, which has famously protected even bad teachers from losing their jobs.

“It’s worth watching what happens in California,” University of Oregon education scholar David T. Conley told the Wall Street Journal. “If a new model emerges it’s going to attract a lot of attention around the nation.”

Demographic differences

The poll also suggested that some sharp demographic differences persisted in how Californians perceive other controversial efforts at public school reform. The implementation of the new Common Core standards, for instance, has provoked outrage and resistance across the country — but not always from a strong majority.

In California, the poll indicated, opinion was divided over standardized testing of the kind Common Core favors. “A majority of Latino voters, 55 percent, said mandatory exams improve public education in the state by gauging student progress and providing teachers with vital information,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. But roughly “the same percentage of white voters said such exams are harmful because they force educators to narrow instruction and don’t account for different styles of learning.”

Life after Vergara

The political and legal weakness of California’s teachers unions was laid bare by the Vergara decision, which struck a strong blow against protective tenure practices by deeming them an infringement of students’ constitutional rights. “The case has produced a lot of headlines but very little movement inside the state Capitol,” as KQED observed. “And yet the new poll suggests real skepticism among the public. Just 7 percent of those surveyed believe the current two-year tenure threshold is the right level. And a whopping 82 percent believe that performance should play more of a role in deciding which teachers to keep and which ones to fire.”

One reason for Sacramento’s inaction: the final impact of the Vergara ruling has yet to be decided by the courts. As CalWatchdog.com previously noted, one recent Supreme Court holding on public housing law did give the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers some reason for optimism. Vergara‘s fate could hinge on a higher court’s determination as to whether it properly applied the so-called “disparate impact” standard:

“The analogies between Texas public housing laws and California education laws are not precise. But if [Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia’s framing of what constitutes unconstitutional racial discrimination — conscious, intentional, consequential bias in the crafting of a law — holds for a majority of the high court, then the California education status quo is likely to survive the Vergara case.”

Private challenges

But in the interim, in Vergara‘s wake, unions have faced a wave of follow-on litigation. In addition to a broad challenge against collecting dues from all teachers, four state teachers have taken the unions to court over their use of dues “for political activities,” the Washington Post reported. “The plaintiffs argue that unions are violating their constitutional right to free speech by forcing them to either support union-favored causes and candidates or lose access to important job benefits. At stake are tens of millions of dollars in dues collected by the state’s two largest teachers unions,” the CTA and the CFT.

Although union leaders have responded to the litigation by portraying its backers as part of a broader crusade against unions of all types, the USC Dornsife/Times poll suggests that Californians are inclined to think of the role and power of unions at public schools as an issue distinct from broader debates over the strength and purpose of organized labor in America.

That’s what California public school students face as the school year comes to an end. The Academic Performance Index, used to measure and monitor students’ progress statewide, was implemented by the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999. But the state Board of Education just exempted schools from taking the API this year. It was going to be gone for good next year anyway.

The Smarter Balanced test is part of the new Common Core standards the state is implementing along with most other states. Smarter Balanced was given to students last year on a trial basis, with another trial scheduled for this year.

As AP reported, Board President Michael “Kirst said that even if the new test results aren’t used on the state index, they will still be reported at the school, district and state level. ‘They’ll be held accountable to the public,’ he said.”

Officials believed it didn’t make sense to burden students with the time and effort to take two tests, one of which no longer will be given.

As the Monterey Herald noted, “The API is at odds with the federal system to measure growth, and over the years school administrators grew upset with having two different systems that often yielded conflicting results. In many instances, particular schools were making progress according to the API, but were falling behind according to the federal Adequate Yearly Progress report.”

Breathing room

School districts had warned officials they weren’t ready to administer the new Smarter Balanced tests, much less to perform well. In a case seen as indicative of the size of the problem, Los Angeles Unified School District struggled with the newly computerized format of the test. “At LAUSD,” the Associated Press reported, “there were numerous problems when a practice test was administered, including the website crashing and slow connectivity.”

Although district officials told the AP those issues had been resolved and tests now underway in 94 schools, LAUSD was able to proceed with confidence because of the breathing room it secured along with several other school districts. It was their request which state officials accepted to suspend state accountability rankings. Concerned that students would face struggles of their own transitioning away from pencil-and-paper testing, the school districts convinced officials to treat the results as a diagnostic only.

In a further effort to blunt the force of change, administrators have ensured the testing window now stretches out over weeks, not the handful of days used under the previous regime.

Looking for the exits

Across the country, some legislators have made moves toward targeting Common Core for opt-out provisions. One New York Assemblyman introduced what he called the Common Core Parental Refusal Act.

In that state, opinions on Common Core have become sharply divided. In a forum printing letters from opponents and supporters in school administration, the Washington Post featured one principal who warned of daunting failure rates on the horizon:

“If we were to retain all third graders who scored a ‘1’ on our Common Core tests (1 signifies below basic and 3 is proficient), New York would retain about 45 percent of black or Latino students, 75 percent of students with disabilities, and 75 percent of English language learners. Is your state prepared to do that?”

In California, however, parents have been able to withdraw their children from standardized tests at their discretion since 1996. According to California Education Code section 60615:

“[N]otwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted.”

Common Core

The Common Core website explained the controversial origin of the standards, an unprecedented recent effort to overhaul the way America educates:

“State education chiefs and governors in 48 states came together to develop the Common Core, a set of clear college- and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics.”

Although other states have seen vehement disagreement over the Common Core, in California the standards have received relatively strong support among parents, teachers and administrators.

Republicans generally have led the opposition to Common Core nationally and in California. But last week the program was endorsed by Assembly Republican Leader Kristin Olsen of Modesto.

AP reported that last Thursday, “Olsen broke from Republican activists and GOP presidential contenders who have blasted a set of rigorous academic standards in schools known as Common Core. Olsen said she is a strong supporter of the education overhaul’s goals of expanding critical thinking and problem solving and blasted myths about Common Core, such as a rumor that it would mandate the collection of children’s DNA.”

Olsen herself said of Common Core, “I think it certainly can be successful. We have to try something different because the status quo that was making us 46th out of 50 in the nation is unacceptable.” She was referring to California students’ low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.

State Sen. Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, has introduced Senate Bill 172, which “would remove the high school exit examination as a condition of receiving a diploma of graduation or a condition of graduation from high school for each pupil completing grade 12” for the graduating classes of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

The bill also would “convene an advisory panel consisting of specified individuals to provide recommendations” to Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, including the existing exam and “alternative pathways to satisfy specified high school graduation requirement.”

As Robert Oakes, Liu’s legislative director, explained to the education publication Cabinet Report, “It’s not clear that the results of the exam have been an indicator that students are really mastering all of the skills and tools they need to be proficient.”

And given that 95.5 percent of 418,000 high-school students passed the exam in 2014, he said, “the data doesn’t seem that persuasive” to keep it going. “We just haven’t seen that we’re getting the intended results compared to the costs.”

Costs

According to Education Week Teacher, “the state spends $72.5 million a year directly for the test, and many millions more on test preparation.”

Another factor is the state is switching to a new general-assessment system. The old Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) system has been shelved. It is being replaced by the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. CASPP, according to Cabinet Report, “features a computer-based test aligned to the Common Core and developed over the past four years by a coalition of states called the Smarter Balanced consortium.”

It’s also possible the CASPP given to 11th graders could become a high-school exit exam.

“I think it’s important that we have a high-school exit exam to encourage students to concentrate on their studies and not get distracted,” Lance Izumi told us; he’s Koret Senior Fellow and senior director of Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. “Getting rid of the exit exam would take another accountability device of the table.”

“The state still has problems getting students ready for college,” he added.

KPCC reported, “According to the most recent numbers, one in three freshmen entering the California State University system in fall of 2012 failed the math test that measures whether they’re ready for college work. About the same proportion failed the English test.

“To help them catch up, Cal State spends about $30 million every year on remediation courses.”

Izumi said the STAR exam worked for more than a decade along with the exit exam, and the same arrangement could be made the new CASPP exam system. “A high-school exit exam maintains certain benchmarks for students to meet,” he said. “They’re not high, but the help the students concentrate on certain goals.”

Common Core controversy

Common Core itself has been controversial nationally, but not so much in California. Some states that adopted the national standards have dropped them, charging the standards are too lax.

But Gov. Jerry Brown and the California education establishment have embraced Common Core. However, the Jan. 29 Orange County Register reported the Common Core testing price tag is clocking in at $1 billion a year, with local districts asking the state to pick up the tab.

Current tests are with paper and pencil, but the new CASPP is taken by students on computers.

“This computer thing is a whole different deal than the No. 2 pencil,” said Superintendent Rick Miller of Santa Ana Unified. “You have to reimburse the mandate based on that.”

Marc Babin, who created an organization called Cal200 to further his aims, sued California in 2013 to enforce the state law governing time spent in public school on physical education. According to EdSource, Babin alleged that “37 school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, the largest district in the state, are out of compliance with state physical education law.”

Current requirements hold schools to a standard of 200 minutes of P.E. every 10 days in the first six grades of schooling. Rather than litigate the issue, the state agreed to compel elementary schools throughout the state to document their compliance with the law.

Sweeping effect

Schools from the Bay Area and Central Coast to the Central Valley and Southern California are impacted by the settlement. It will will begin to take effect after Judge Mary Wiss of the San Francisco Superior Court gives her official approval in March. By far the heaviest burden has fallen on Southland schools, especially the LAUSD.

Seeking to head the lawsuit off at the pass, LAUSD worked last year to demonstrate it was complying with the minimums imposed by state law. As the Los Angeles Times reported, LAUSD, Palm Springs Unified and other districts “asked teachers to show that they are meeting state requirements for physical education,” with lesson plans that “outline schedules for instruction, activities and classes.” As the suit proceeded through court, noted the Times, LAUSD claimed Babin’s allegations were not frivolous, but that they “had already been rectified.”

Donald Driscoll, Babin’s attorney and a fellow parent who began pushing for P.E. compliance in 2009, begged to differ. LAUSD, he said last year, “has been a particular offender. They give lip service to the idea that P.E. is important. That just plain doesn’t work. What that produces is kids who don’t get enough exercise.”

Now, Driscoll and Babin will get to see what kind of results state law can actually attain.

Tracing the problem

The terms of the settlement impose rigorous new administrative requirements that are all but certain to further strain many schools struggling to keep up with California’s transition to Common Core standards. As Jane Meredith Adams writes:

“Under the settlement agreement, elementary school teachers in the districts must report the minutes they spend teaching physical education, publish the schedule to parents and be subject to spot checks from principals. If teachers skip scheduled physical education instruction, they will note the reason why and report when those minutes were made up. The schedules will be submitted to local school boards for review.”

Adams pins the blame for the strain on cuts to the state’s education budget, noting that many elementary schools have given dedicated P.E. teachers the axe. As a result, “classroom teachers are asked to squeeze in physical education while simultaneously improving academic test scores.”

But the impact of Common Core training and expectations is severe. Last month, the Sacramento Bee editorial board was flatly warned by Michael Kirst, president of the state Board of Education, that this year’s first-time results of the statewide “Smarter Balanced” test will be “shocking.”

As the editorial board underscored:

“6.2 million children are being taught here by some 280,000 teachers in about 1,000 school districts. Two-thirds of those kids are poor, in the foster-care system or unable to speak English fluently.

“So far, only about a third of our teachers have been trained in the new standards, with Common Core math teachers particularly hard to come by. Despite floods of state money – K-12 education soaks up about 40 percent of the state budget – California’s education spending per pupil ranks near the bottom.”

Those structural problems are not about to change. Add the rigors of state-mandated P.E. to the mix, and California’s public elementary schools are in for a punishing regimen.

After 13 years in U.S. public schools,  our college kids read only at a 7th-grade level, on average. Reported Breitbart Texas:

The premise behind the Common Core State Standards is that all public school students will be college and career ready for the theoretical workforce of tomorrow. Even in Texas, which never adopted the Common Core, College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) drive public education today. Yet, what is called ‘college and career ready’ may not be preparing students at all because most US college freshman can only read at a seventh grade level.

Education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky is the formidable figure on the front lines who is questioning what can be done to make sense of Common Core and all this college and career readiness.

She is best known for serving on the Common Core Validation Committee in 2009-10 and refusing to approve standards she called ‘inferior’, along with colleague James Milgram, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University.

How is America supposed to compete with smart youngsters from China, Japan, South Korea, Europe, etc., when our own kids are this badly mis-educated?

And Common Core will make things worse. Common Core is being imposed in California, which already has spent $1 billion on implementation.

Yet the state previously had excellent standards developed in the late 1990s, the California Standard Tests.

Meanwhile, in 2012 voters passed Proposition 30, which was advertised as $7 billion mostly for schools.

Does it make sense to spend more money on standards that go only so high as 7th grade by college?

On several fronts, key business, education and political interests have heightened their push for the changes. Although opposition remains strong, pro-Common Core groups sense that a tipping point may be approaching. Rather than taking victory for granted, they are mobilizing, using overlapping strategies centered on the so-called “Smarter Balanced” assessments.

The computer-based tests, used to appraise students’ mastery of Common Core, are already receiving mixed reviews at best. As the Orange County Register reports, students have experienced the kinds of tech glitches that are familiar to Americans from the checkout aisle to Obamacare signups — frozen screens, no sound, slow clicks and password resets. Administrators have additional challenges on their mind. Amy Kernan, a vice principal interviewed by the Register, expressed concern that the “hallmark” adaptive testing portion of Smarter Balanced has yet to be pilot tested itself.

Federal pressure to meet deadline

Thanks to U.S. Department of Education demands, California has just one year to test out the exams. (Scores won’t be issued this year.) Remarkably, California is one of several states singled out by the DOE for punishment if it fails to meet the Smarter Balanced deadline. Despite widespread enthusiasm among California lawmakers for Common Core, legislators in 2013 passed a bill designed to suspend nearly all statewide student testing for one year — the better to prepare for Smarter Balanced implementation.

Signed into law in September by Gov. Jerry Brown, Assembly Bill 484 provoked the swift ire of DOE officials. As activists objected that the bill would create a “black hole of information,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that California would lose up to $15 million or more in federal education funding for the move. Deborah Delisle, assistant secretary in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, sent a sternly worded letter to Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, and Mike Kirst, president of the state Board of Education. “By failing to administer a reading/language arts and mathematics assessment to all students in the tested grades,” she wrote, “California would be unable to provide this important information to students, principals, teachers and parents.”

A scramble for funding

Last spring, Brown also authorized one and a quarter billion dollars of state-funded Common Core funds, to be distributed proportionally to each school district in California. In an effort to hang onto federal dollars, Sacramento officials resolved to proceed with Smarter Balanced testing only, speeding up the timetable for distributing the $1.25 billion.

What they didn’t anticipate was confusion over how that money would be spent. California school districts vary widely in their level of education technology and technical support. According to the Hechinger Report, some districts have already spent all of their share of the grant, while others have spent only a third — leading Brown to pledge this May an additional one-time sum of $26.7 million to grease the wheels for Smarter Balanced.

Public relations push

With so much uncertainty surrounding the cost of merely being able to administer the Smarter Balanced exams, Common Core supporters have issued a fresh statement touting the embattled agenda. Some 300 groups and individuals have signed a joint statement, sent to Gov. Brown and others, justifying the Smarter Balanced ordeal as a necessary step in the march toward fulfilling Common Core advocates’ promises.

At least one activist expressed clear concern that Smarter Balanced posed a significant threat to favorable public and educator opinion surrounding Common Core. Debra Brown, associate director of education policy for Children Now, expressed “trepidation” over the likelihood of unfavorable “knee-jerk reactions” toward the testing process.

The public relations effort follows on the heels of a February letter sent to state education officials by Common Core opponents. Californians United Against Common Core pegged the estimated cost of assessing Common Core at over $1 billion.

In the meantime, Colbert just attacked President Obama’s “Common Core” dumbing-down education scheme that’s being imposed hard core in California, with $1 billion dedicated to it by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Here’s Colbert: