Common Core Exams: New York Schools Get an F

The so-called common core standards will not survive. That’s because public school students can’t pass the tests.

New York State got the test results. Across the state, 69% could not pass in English, and the same was true for math. It was worse in New York City. [amazon asin=1455577170&template=*lrc ad (right)]

Last year, with easier exams, 55% passed. So, the much-heralded core curriculum tests have exposed the schools as massive failures. This will not be allowed to continue. Either the tests will be made easier or else the tests will be abandoned. Count on it. No test is ever allowed to expose tax-funded bureaucrats as total incompetents, year after year.

Candidates for mayor blame Mayor Bloomberg. But mayors have no say in education. The education bureaucracy is untouchable.

No one knows what to do. They are in panic mode.

Watch the videos. Parents are outraged. School officials are in hunker-down mode.

The top educational official in the country is the Secretary of Education. She says this: no problem! Parents should not be alarmed, she says. The test results will “give a clear picture of where our students are on the trajectory toward college and career readiness.” Yes, they do. The kids are not ready.

Then, she added, don’t blame tax-funded education. No, no, no. “The lower proficiency rates that we will see . . . do not reflect that teachers are teaching less or students are learning less.”

The tests in fact show that the dumbed-down tests before gave a misleading picture. They did not reveal the total failure of today’s tax-funded schools. The new tests do.

Watch the videos. No one knows what to do.

The first video shows that the reporter can’t do math. He says the scores were down 25% to 30%. The scores were down 25 to 30 percentage points, not percent. They were down from about 55% pass to 30% pass. That is a decline of 45%.