Education Next – Michael J. Petrilli
“In May, a new organization called Learning Heroes released a survey with a startling finding: 90 percent of parents believe that their children are performing at “grade level” or higher in their schoolwork. Setting aside the debate over what “grade level” even means, by any reasonable definition many of these parents, if they are being frank with the pollsters and themselves, are sorely misinformed. Consider that only about a third of U.S. teenagers leave high school ready for credit-bearing college courses. Providing a more honest assessment of student performance was one of the goals of the Common Core initiative and the new tests created by states that are meant to align to the new, higher standards. And, as reported in these pages, those tests are much tougher than they used to be, with failure rates in many states approaching those reported on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (see “After Common Core, States Set Rigorous Standards,” features, Summer 2016). Yet on the heels of their first administration in the spring of 2015, and the reporting of results in the months following, parents seem to be as ill-informed as ever.”(more)