CASE 21 Tests In NC

Posted on January 12, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Parents in various areas of North Carolina will have children facing the CASE 21 test in the coming weeks.  My own child, a second grader, will be required to take this ‘benchmarking’ test.

I was unaware up until I saw a small comment on my child’s homework that CASE 21 was given to my child’s class the following week. State Board of Education members I spoke with about the test were also surprised this was being given in second grade.

Being the busy-body I am, I emailed our school with a list of questions and concerns. My child’s teacher was quite prompt in replying and noted to me that, “The Second-grade CASE 21 assessments are basically mid-year benchmark assessments; they are used to help identify those students who may at risk next year in Third grade in Reading or Math.”

I wanted to share the other information I received from my inquiry for other parents to see.  The following is the questions I asked followed by the answer in blue from our school’s testing coordinator:

Are these required tests? (Do the kids have to take them?)  CASE21 assessments are required per the school district at mid and end of year for 2nd grade students
Is any personal information requested to be given in these tests beyond his name or NCWISE number?  Each student’s answer sheet contains the student’s name, NCWISE number, grade, teacher and birthdate.  This information is only used to make sure we identify students correctly and is not used for additional purposes.
Are these taken online?  These are multiple choice pencil and paper tests with answers recorded on a bubble sheet.
Typically how long are these tests? How many questions?  These tests are not timed and typically require 60-90 minutes to complete.  There are approximately 30 questions for English Language Arts and an additional 30 questions for Mathematics.  One subject is assessed each day over 2 days.
Are they multiple choice as the samples I have looked at seem to be?  The instruction and practice activities provided by classroom teachers closely align to the format of the actual assessment items.
Who gets the scores and data? (HRES? WCPSS? Other entities?)  Each teacher receives scores for his/her students.  More holistic data which groups scores by class, grade, and school, without use of student names, is used at the school and district level to gauge effectiveness of instruction.

I assume parents be given the results? When does that typically happen?  Results are sent to parents via a form letter from the classroom teacher approximately two weeks after testing is complete.

Can parents see/view the full tests after they are given?  Parents may view the tests within a parent conference setting, however for security and standardization reasons, the actual tests remain within the school building in a secure location and are released to classroom teachers after testing to be used for instructional purposes.

Note: I will be making an appointment to view the test per the last question above.

About CASE 21

CASE 21 tests are created by CASE Assessments in Durham, North Carolina. CASE Assessments is an arm of TE21 (Training and Education in the 21st Century), which is a for profit company located in Charleston, South Carolina.

The CASE website does have samples of tests on their site if you dig around in the menus. The questions are common core aligned. (Link: http://www.te21.com/case)

The CASE site also states results come back in 48 hours, according to the Teacher FAQ. That Teacher FAQ also states this about what is captured:

CASE Assessments’ reports provide class, school, and district data on overall projected achievement level and scale score, suggested grades for students (100 pt. scale), thinking skills, curriculum units or standards, percent correct, and reading standards and genres.

View the Executive Leadership at TE21.  Read the History of TE21.

 

Related Reading:
CASE ‘READY’ Assessment (ACT related)
Information on Opting Out of testing in North Carolina

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core, EDUCATION, Testing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Parents, Have You Taken Your Common Core Class?

Posted on January 12, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Common Core Diva has turned up an interesting advertisement via the Stop Common Core NY Facebook group:

The caption reads:

“This is from Suffolk Community College’s continuing education booklet. Parents have to take a course to learn how to help their children with their school/homework?? Stop the insanity!”

Parents being trained and educated in order to help their child with basic homework. Gee, sounds familiar.

 

Posted in A.P. Dillon (LL1885), Common Core | 1 Comment

Barber Takes Occupy Monday To New York

Posted on January 12, 2015 by A.P. Dillon

Reverend Barber’s Moral Monday Roadshow hits New York:

The event is January 12th (today) and this is how the Facebook page associated with it labels and describes it – complete with busing schedule:

Moral Monday to Fight for Fairness in Education Where: Alliance for Quality Education of New York 94 Central Ave, Albany, New York Million Dollar Staircase, New York State Capitol, Albany Billionaires bought Albany and now they want to take over our schools. We are not going to let that happen.

AQE is partnering with Citizen Action of New York, Make the Road NY, New York Communities for Change, the UFT, NYSUT, Strong Economy for All and Coalition for Education Justice. Contact Chad Radock at 978-376-8178 or chad@aqeny.org. NEED A RIDE?

Buses are leaving from the following communities: Brentwood (LI) Brooklyn Bronx Buffalo Kingston Manhattan Newburgh New Paltz Rochester Roslyn (LI) Call Chad Radock of AQE at (518) 288 – 5708 to find out where the buses are leaving and to reserve your seat!!

Here’s the flier at AQE, touting millionaires corrupting education with their dollars.
Ask AQE where they stand on Common Core. These people are ridiculous hypocrites only concerned with the testing aspects of the Core, which impact teachers and their subsequent union affiliations and their wallets.

Some tidbits about AQE

  • Their main thrust is ‘fiscal equity‘.
  • Their spokesperson is actress Cynthia Nixon of Sex and the City fame.
  • Per the donation page, “AQE is a 501(c)4 organization, and therefore your donation is not tax exempt.”  AQE’s EIN # is 22-3810450. View their 990 forms and information here.  The 2013 990 filing shows that Citizens Action of NY and Public Policy and Education Foundation are under the AQE umbrella. The 2013 filing shows AQE pulled in over $381k in donations. View the 2012 filing; note the huge drop off in donations from the prior year 2011 of just under $618k to $334k.

AQE thinks Astorino’s opposition to Common Core was a ‘political stunt’:

Gleaned from their ‘policy’ page:

* Solidly anti-charter.
* Utilizes the ‘school to prison pipeline’ catch phrase that we see Barber’s various outlets stoking here in North Carolina.
* Big corporations like Romney’s Bain Capital are bad, Bill Gates is good.
* Pre-K proponent.

WHOIS of the site reveals it is registered to Billy Easton:

Registrant Name:Billy Easton
Registrant Organization: Alliance for Quality Education of New York
Registrant Street: 94 Central Ave
Registrant City:Albany
Registrant State/Province:NY
Registrant Postal Code:12206
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.5184325315
Registrant Fax: +1.5184349498
Registrant Email:mdavoli@aqeny.org

Mr. Easton is a fan of the Moral Monday method of getting arrested to garner media attention and is quite proud of that.

Billy Easton is a community and union organizer per his profile at ‘Justice Works”:

Since 2005 Mr. Easton has been the Executive Director of AQE.  He brings 30 years of experience in community and union organizing and a wealth of experience in strategy, media relations, politics and legislative activity to his work at AQE.  Billy provides significant leadership to the organizing, policy, media relations and strategic work of AQE and partner organizations. (See More)

Easton and AQE are described and subsequently dismantled in a brutal article by the New York Post title, Pigs in Saints’ Clothing. Excerpt below, which later compares them to the Wisconsin protests debacle:

Walk just about any capitol corridor in Albany, and odds are you’ll trip over lobbyist-without-portfolio Billy Easton, of the fraudulently mislabeled Alliance for Quality Education.

We say without portfolio because, while rare is the legislator whom Billy hasn’t buttonholed lately, he has yet to register as a lobbyist this year.

And we say fraudulent because AQE simply is a creature of New York state’s primary teachers unions — and thus its connection to quality education is laughably tangential.

Further down in the NY Post piece, Citizen action is mentioned.  Citizen Action also is in the Moral Monday Facebook description mentioned earlier. Relevant section:

AQE shares an Albany address with Citizen Action, the local affiliate of USAction, a self-professed “progressive, grass-roots” organization aimed at electing left-liberal candidates, enacting significant hikes in both taxes and spending, and increasing the number of public-sector — i.e., heavily unionized — jobs.

 


							

	
			

													
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#DM7 Article: The Fundamental Right To Homeschool


			

				Posted on January 11, 2015 by A.P. Dillon			


					

				
This is a reposting of my weekly column at Da Tech Guy: The Fundamental Right To Homeschool




By A.P. Dillon


The NY Times has an article out this week titled, “Home Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation“.  The article focuses on changes in Pennsylvania, but this is an article that should give everyone pause.


The article’s main thrust is that homeschools are not regulated enough and deserve more oversight – by a government entity, of course. A loose translation of that might be ‘all your kids are belong to us’.


The article talks around the fact that the choice to homeschool is the fundamental right of the parent, despite what the DOJ or in this case, a non-profit, might have to say about it. One of the major points of homeschooling is to avoid government interference and intrusion, not add to it.


The NY times cites a non-profit leading the charge to invade homeschools and bases the article around the non-profit’s claims on oversight:


Eleven states do not require families to register with any school district or state agency that they are teaching their children at home, according to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit group that is pushing for more accountability in home schooling. Fourteen states do not specify any subjects that families must teach, and only nine states require that parents have at least a high school diploma or equivalent in order to teach their children. In half the states, children who are taught at home never have to take a standardized test or be subject to any sort of formal outside assessment.


 


Coalition for Responsible Home Education’s (CRHE) website is registered anonymously.  It seems perhaps that CHRE’s demands for accountability and transparency only extends to other people.  View the non-profit information for CRHE here. I was unable to find their 990 or required 990-N.


The founders, Rachel Coleman and Heather Doney were homeschooled but have turned their attention to raising awareness of the abuses that can happen in a homeschool. Gee, because public schools don’t have that problem at all, right?


The unspoken underlying theme being that homeschooling is dangerous; Parents can’t be trusted to make educational decisions for their kids. Along those same lines is the theme of the use of homeschooling as a shield for abuse or equating homeschooling with abuse, with the focus on a small fraction of cases being used as the premise for oversight of the majority.


The NY Times article doesn’t cite the number of abuse cases but their non-profit source does on their website, “As of October 2014, the website has 242 cases listed, of which 94 involve fatalities.”  Bear in mind, there are somewhere near 2 million homeschooled kids in the United States.  On the official CHRE site, I didn’t see a time frame of these “242 cases and 94 fatalities”, however, on the website CHRE redirects you to called ‘Homeschooling’s Invisible Children’, they have a timeline of the fatalities that goes back to 1987.


The question has to be asked, are the “242 cases and 94 fatalities” CHRE is using from this timeline that spans a 28 year period? It can also be argued that in these cases pointed to by CHRE, homeschooling isn’t the issue, abuse is. Arguably, said abuse would have happened regardless of schooling status. I’m not trying to make light of any of these rather horrifying cases, just pointing out there appears to be a muddying of the real issue here.


Coleman, according to CRHE’s website, “is currently working on a dissertation on the role of children and childhood in the rise of the Christian Right.” Someone didn’t get the memo about homeschooling not being just for “scary religious people” anymore. Paging Buffy and Glenn Reynolds.


Coleman seems to be in the ‘all your kids belong to us’ camp.  By her own admission in the NY Times piece, spying on parents  some accountability ought to keep those pesky parents in line:


Rachel Coleman, executive director of the coalition, who was home-schooled from kindergarten through high school, said that although she had a good experience, she had talked to many others who did not. “Just having some accountability would absolutely make parents who might otherwise drop the ball step it up a bit,” she said.


Got that parents? We need someone checking your work for you because you might slip up.


The closing paragraph is a good response to Ms. Coleman or anyone else who thinks they know best for someone else’s children:




Ms. Santoro said she was frustrated that despite the change in Pennsylvania’s law, she still had to show a portfolio of Jack’s and Lily’s work to an outside evaluator.


“It’s almost like the State of Pennsylvania feels that home-educating families are hiding something or that they just absolutely must micromanage us,” she said. “I only know what’s best for the Santoros. I don’t know what’s best for anyone else, and no one knows what’s best for me.”




 


 


If you enjoyed this article, you should really check out other pieces written by Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent Seven writers and maybe hit that tip jar!


AP DillonA.P. Dillon (Lady Liberty 1885), is a Conservative minded wife and mother living in the Triangle area of North Carolina. A.P. Dillon founded the blog LadyLiberty1885.com in 2009. After the 2012 election, she added an Instapundit style blog called The ConMom Blog. Mrs. Dillon recently participated in Glenn Beck’sWe Will Not Conform. Mrs. Dillon’s writing, in addition to Da Tech Guy’s Magnificent 7, can also be found at StopCommonCoreNC.org, WatchdogWireNC and WizBang. Non-political writing projects include science fiction novellas that are, as of yet, unpublished. Her current writing project is a children’s book series.

							

	
			

													
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The Common Core Weekend Reads – 1-11-15


			

				Posted on January 11, 2015 by A.P. Dillon			


					

				
CC Morpheous 2 yr collegeThese are the Common Core Weekend Reads for January 11th, 2015.


This is a review of the past week of news on Common Core nationwide and in North Carolina.


Articles are organized by category.


Prior Edition of Weekend Reads: 1-4-15






 


NC UPDATES:

The next ASRC meeting date has changed from January 19th to the 16th due to Martin Luther King Day.  December’s meeting materials have been posted to the ASRC site.



QUOTES OF THE WEEK:


“I’m fine with moving (to the SAT) because it is more aligned with the Common Core standards,” Felske said. “If that better prepares students and supports the work our teachers are doing and shows it with results on the test, I’m all for it.”


Michigan Department of Education officials said the SAT will be redesigned and will be “aligned to Michigan content standards.”

-Mlive,  Superintendents: Switch from ACT to SAT creates concern about college admissions policies


“Conservative activists also are targeting Common Core, the national education standards adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia over the past few years. Opposition from parent and community groups has become a hot political issue on the right over the past year, leading three states — Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — to drop out of the program.”

– Washington Post, Republicans in State Government Plan Juggernaut of Conservative Legislation​


“State Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, said he expects an extensive debate on the standards in the upcoming session.



“It is an absolute disaster,” he said. (Teachers) “should not be expected to work under fear of termination when that decision to terminate is going to be based on such weak evidence. They need to completely abandon everything to do with Common Core. We need to set up standards that have been proven and tried. A lot of teachers are retiring and are fed up with this mess.” 

-Daily Commercial, ​Florida Standards worry locals


“As organizations representing the base voting bloc of Indiana’s Republican supermajority, we thought it important to set the record straight.  We cannot support a voucher expansion, unless the legislature and Governor are willing to cut the Common Core strings that bind it.  Indiana’s voucher program was recently rated as being the second worst in the country when it comes to protecting private school autonomy.  Expanding this program, without addressing this fact, is unacceptable and further erodes the very concept of school choice,” Crossin stated.

–Truth In American Education, Conservative Groups Oppose Mike Pence’s Education Reform Agenda​


“No matter what happens to this bill, it’s going to be a huge story,” Flaugh said. “The only reason we’re having this debate is because people who are implementing (Common Core) are realizing how horrible it is, and those who lead the grass-roots groups demand they stop it.”

-WTSP, Florida group drafts anti-Common Core bill




APUSH:





LEGISLATIVE/LEGAL:



POLITICAL/PROTESTS:



HIGHLIGHTED ARTICLES:



“Free”? Oh really?

REMINDER: 


CC Morpheous 2 yr college


RELATED HIGHLIGHTED READS:



THE WEEKEND READS:



TESTING UPDATES:



VIDEO OF THE WEEK:



TWEETS OF THE WEEK:








							

	
			

													
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WCPSS Board Meeting Touts Wake Schools Rating at k12Niche.com


			

				Posted on January 9, 2015 by A.P. Dillon			


					

				
A video was posted by Wake County Public Schools of part of the Wake County Schools Board meeting on 1/6/15. In the opening remarks, Superintendent Merrill mentions WCPSS received accolades from “Niche“, a website that scores and ranks school performance.  See the Niche ‘methodology’ for how they rank schools here.


Who runs Niche?

According to the Niche site, the CEO is a member of multiple boards at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon has been a major supporter and funder of the Common Core Standards. For a look at how much enter ‘Common Core State Standards’ into their grants search box.


Luke Skurman, our CEO, grew up in San Francisco. He came to Pittsburgh in 1998 to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Luke is a member of several boards including the Carnegie Mellon University Board of Trustees, where he serves as the youngest trustee member in its history, and the Sprout Fund. Luke is also a co-founder and chairman of Thrill Mill, a non-profit innovation accelerator, and the founding curator of the Global Shapers Pittsburgh Hub, an initiative of the World Economic Forum. He has won national awards related to entrepreneurship from Business Week, Fast Company, and Inc. Magazine. Luke is married to his amazing wife, Natalia, and they have one awesome son, Oliver.


A WHOIS of the Niche site reveals a private registration through GoDaddy.


Niche is a for-profit company. View their media kit.


Apparently Niche, as College Prowler, had an incident on Facebook a while back.

							

	
			

													
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