Common Core State [sic] Standards
If you think you’re smarter than a fifth-grader, consider yourself lucky you don’t have to take this exam.
A concerned educator leaked the Daily News a copy of a new, more challenging state reading exam for fifth-graders, and it's as much of a doozy as it is controversial.
It's full of long, dense, off-the-wall nonfiction passages on making wind tunnels, soil formation and studying whales. There are two short stories, both set overseas. And there's a vague selection from a poem about loneliness that students must interpret before choosing among four answers that contain two arguably correct selections.
Students got 90 minutes to complete the 32-page test, which contained 42 questions based on six written passages.
The News asked testing experts, teachers and parents to analyze the test, which state and city education officials have kept under lock and key. Everyone who saw it was left dumbfounded by the killer questions.
"You might as well just put 'failure to students' at the top of the exam," said Tracy Woodall, a stay-at-home mom whose son is a fifth-grader at Public School 1 in the Bronx. "There's no way they're going to pass this."
RELATED: NEW EXAMS FAR TOO HARD: EXPERT
New York is one of several states that rolled out new, more difficult math and reading tests this year for grades three through eight that are aligned to national Common Core academic standards. The tougher standards -- adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia -- are designed to better prepare students for college and career. More than 1.2 million children across New York state -- including about 450,000 students in the city -- took the new exams over six school days from April 16-26.
more . . . http://susanohanian.org/core.php?id=502
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