You can’t make this stuff up. The headline at Statesville.com reads, “Iredell test scores improve with lowered achievement bar“.
Excerpt:

The positive numbers, though, are partly the result of a strategic decision the State Board of Education made in March to add an extra achievement level to EOG and EOC tests. For about two decades in North Carolina, students were given either a score of 1,2,3 or 4, with 3s and 4s considered passing. But in response to larger-than-expected numbers of third-graders being likely to need summer school for lack of reading on grade level per the state’s new Read to Achieve law, the State Board voted 8-4 in March to add a fifth level, and now scores of 3,4 and 5 are considered passing. Under the new system, level 3 students have “sufficient command” of the material, but level 4 and 5 students are “career and college ready.”

Well… DUH.
Of course if you lower the bar for scores it is going to look like there was improved achievement.  This is smoke and mirrors, folks.

The educrat ‘powers that be’ in NC keep using the word “improved”. I do not think that word means what they think it means.

Lowered Bar = Scores Are Good, All is Well!

What kind of logic is this?!

Is this Common Core math?

This is DPI spinning the numbers given that last years were a nightmare with a 36% statewide drop — the biggest in our state’s history and nearly double that of any drop in the past when we shifted standards.

This is the same kind of smoke and mirrors to hide the failings for the fundamentally flawed experiment, Common Core, that we saw in NY State with their test score monkey business.

Read the comments on that Statesville.com article.

UPDATE:  Dr. Stoops  – Attention Media: Do Not Do This.

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