Giving Compass' Take:

• Education leaders are suggesting that Common Core standards may account for the dip in National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, but caution against an overreaction. 

• What else could account for the dip in scores? What incremental change can be made to start improving scores? 

• Find out how donors can advance education and the Common Core.

Education leaders cited implementation of the Common Core as a possible reason for a dip in national test scores, even as they cautioned against definitively tying specific policies to the change.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has been administered every other year since the late 1960s, scores fourth- and eighth-graders in math and reading. Results for both eighth-grade exams dropped nationally, as did results for fourth-grade math. Scores for the fourth-grade reading test remained flat from the last results.
Many states implemented the more rigorous Common Core academic standards in the period between the 2013 and 2015 tests. The dip in the NAEP scores could give the Common Core’s many detractors, some who see the standards as federal overreach into local schools, one more reason to dislike it.

A study released by the American Institutes for Research found “reasonable agreement” overall between the skills tested in the NAEP math exam and the math content aligned with the Common Core standards. But there substantial differences in other subjects, such as 4th-grade data analysis, statistics, and probability, where only 47 percent of the items covered by the NAEP test are included in the Common Core.

Read the full article on Common Core by Carolyn Phenicie at The 74.