Missouri schools preparing to take Common Core tests

We may be working on new Missouri standards thanks to HB 1490, but state schools will be taking Common Core tests for the first time this spring. From the KOLR report:
Students will take the new exams online instead of at a desk with a booklet and a pencil. They also will have to go further than filling in a bubble, as many questions or problems ask the student to type an explanation for their answer.

The tests could be challenging. Statewide, 53 percent of kids tested proficient or advanced last year in English and math.

Some classrooms in 21 states practiced with the new test format last year, and only 30-40 percent of kids at each grade level tested advanced or proficient.

Ozark Schools Assistant Superintendent Craig Carson said he expects the rigorous standards and the new test format to lead to a drop in the number of students deemed proficient in his district.

"I mean it will be harder, it will be more rigorous,” Carson said. “So kids will have to really prove their thinking in a way we have not done in the past. So it will give us good information on how kids are thinking right now. It's a nice snapshot of how they're doing with the current curriculum standards."

When you hear administrators mixing words like "rigorous," into the conversation, it is usually an indication that they don't have the slightest idea of what they're talking about, but they have heard other administrators using the word and figured they had better not get left behind.