ELA Tests 2013 – Common Core

The long awaited and much feared (by students and teachers alike) new English Language Arts Tests were taken by 3 – 8 graders in NYS. The new standardized tests of the seemingly sweeping changes to national education standards known as Common Core were the buzz of the teaching community for months. If at all possible, guidance to educators on the content of these tests was at once plentiful and scarce. The thing with standardized tests, as anyone who has studied for the SAT can attest, test practice is just as, if not more so, important as study of the material. Unfortunately, despite the massive effort, funds, and resources that were invested into this vast change of national standards, not one complete sample test was provided to classrooms.

Test guidance came in the form of this. A few sample exercises that highlight the change in direction. The passages for the ELA were dry, boring, and quite complicated. The math questions were long-winded.

From the NYSED State Assessments Website:

The sample questions are teaching tools for educators and can be shared freely with students and parents. They are designed to help illuminate the way the Common Core should drive instruction and how students will be assessed starting in the 2012-13 school year.

These sample questions set just about every middle school teacher and consequently their students into prolonged anxiety.

So how did the real test turn out?

Thus far I only had had access to the 7 & 8 grades’ ELA test and even there just the Book 1. The test did not in my view turn out as scary as the sample questions suggested. The texts were accessible, somewhat engaging. They were on average longer than in the past, but all in all appropriate.

The questions were varied and, at this first glance, pretty well crafted. I will need a time extension to “compare and contrast” each question with those in the previous years. 😉