Test Prep Review - One Stop Shopping for an Overview of Common Core and Other Standardized Tests URL Given FYI

http://www.testprepreview.com/common-core-test-prep.htm

Now that I have visited the above referenced site, I can see why teachers are pulling their hair out over implementing the new tests.  I've been in a room with four English teachers who couldn't agree on various usage issues.  As I worked my way through the 10th grade English practice tests questions, some of the questions and answers worked - not too hard to figure out how to present the material using best practices in the classroom.

However, one question and the correct answer really had me scratching my head. It was the choice for the ending of an essay and the correct choice involved interjecting the personal pronoun "my" as in my business plan. Of course, I retired to my fainting couch because in the opening of the essay there was no indication that this was an informal essay.  I would have preferred the word choice - a potentially successful business plan - as the word choice because this was an essay intended for a scholarship committee.

It is painfully obvious that STEM is the driving force behind setting up the essays - hence (awkward use of antiquated word would earn me a slap on the Common Core wrist for being too formal) most of the sequenced essay set-up questions deal with science-related and business-related topics. Yikes - English teachers - I'd be sure to understand the business world jargon for sure and be sure you have the main ideas behind STEM working in your classroom to prep for these tests and this was on the 10th grade level. Sigh . . .

While I wouldn't necessarily say this is a horrible thing - I fear it may turn English/Literature teachers into business teachers in terms of content selection and eliminate comparing and contrasting major literary themes. My daughter had a business course in high school and some of what I'm reading sounds like the curriculum that came from that class and the text book she used.  Of course, she's a successful C.P.A. and twenty-eight, but that's a choice she made having had at least a grounding in some classics while in high school. Colleges have become so specialized, that unless a student majors in English, the course freshmen take  "Communications" doesn't require much in the way of understanding or deconstructing: themes; character traits; effective use of language, and the multicultural issues that can be effectively handled in fiction and then linked to non-fiction material.

Teachers - I think there is a strong argument for holding off counting these tests as measures of teacher effectiveness for at least two years and to use them as field instruments only.  Best wishes for those of you faced with understanding these rather complex instruments - yes, they do require thinking and are better than the current recall measures, but in setting up essay and complex usage scenarios, it should really take four years to weed out test questions that aren't on point and teachers working with the curriculum should have the final word.