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Here's the follow-up post to "Why I'm For the Common Core." It explains why we should be leery of the forthcoming "core-aligned" tests -- especially those in English Language Arts that people are rightly anxious about.

These tests could endanger the promise of the Common Core.

The first thing I'd want to do if I were younger would be to launch an effective court challenge to value-added teacher evaluations on the basis of test scores in reading comprehension. The value-added approach to teacher evaluation in reading is unsound both technically and in its curriculum-narrowing effects. The connection between job ratings and tests in ELA has been a disaster for education.

A standards-referenced test compares every student to the standard set by the test giver. A norm-referenced test compares every student to every other student. The lines between different levels of achievement will be set after the test has been taken and corrected. Then the results are laid out, and the lines between levels (cut scores) are set.

When I give my twenty word spelling test, I can't set the grade levels until I correct it. Depending on the results, I may "discover" that an A is anything over a fifteen, twelve is Doing Okay, and anything under nine is failing. Or I may find that twenty is an A, nineteen is okay, and eighteen or less is failing. If you have ever been in a class where grades are curved, you were in a class that used norm referencing.

With standards reference, we can set a solid immovable line between different levels of achievement, and we can do it before the test is even given. This week I'm giving a spelling test consisting of twenty words. Before I even give the test, I can tell my class that if they get eighteen or more correct, they get an A, if they get sixteen correct, they did okay, and if the get thirteen or less correct, they fail.

The fundamental premise of Moneyball is that the labor market of sports is inefficient, and that many teams systematically undervalue particular athletic skills that help them win. While these skills are often subtle – and the players that possess them tend to toil in obscurity - they can be identified using sophisticated statistical techniques, aka sabermetrics. Home runs are fun. On-base percentage is crucial.

The wisdom of the moneyball strategy is no longer controversial. It’s why the A’s almost always outperform their payroll,

However, the triumph of moneyball creates a paradox, since its success depends on the very market inefficiencies it exposes. The end result is a relentless search for new undervalued skills, those hidden talents that nobody else seems to appreciate. At least not yet.

I often recall Houston's Apollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed.  It was incredibly expensive, costing $52 million and it didn't increase reading scores. Intensive math tutoring produced test score gains in that subject. The only real success was due to the old-fashioned, win-win, input-driven method of hiring more counselors.

Michels finds no evidence that Grier's test-driven accountability has benefitted students, but he describes the great success of constructive programs that build on kids' strengths and provide them more opportunities.

With the help of local philanthropies, however, Houston has introduced a wide range of humane, holistic, and effective programs. Michels starts with Las Americas Newcomer School, which is "on paper a failing school." It offers group therapy and social workers who help immigrants "navigate bureaucratic barriers—like proof of residency or vaccination records." He then describes outstanding early education programs that are ready to be scaled up, such as  the Gabriela Mistral Center for Early Childhood, and Project Grad which has provided counseling and helped more than 7,600 students go to college.

One of the interesting things about the mind is that even though we all have one, we don't have perfect insight into how to get the best from it.

Karpicke and Roediger asked students to prepare for a test in various ways, and compared their success

On the final exam differences between the groups were dramatic. While dropping items from study didn’t have much of an effect, the people who dropped items from testing performed relatively poorly: they could only remember about 35% of the word pairs, compared to 80% for people who kept testing items after they had learnt them.

A few years ago, a student at my high school was having a terrible time passing one of the exams needed to earn a Regents Diploma.

Mary has a learning disability that truly impacts her retention and analytical thinking.

Because she was a special education student, at the time there was an easier exam available, the RCT, which she could take and then use to earn a local high school diploma instead of the Regents Diploma.

This dispute is just one example of the mathematical acrobatics required to isolate the effect of one teacher on their students' test scores, when so many other factors inside and outside the school's walls affect how students perform.

When a teacher whose students do well on tests moves to a school where test scores were improving the previous year, and average scores continue improving after that teacher arrives, it is hard to know how much of that continued improvement is due to the new teacher and how much to other factors.

I am talking about data-driven instruction–a way of making teaching less subjective, more objective, less experience-based, more scientific.

Data-driven instruction, advocates say, is scientific and consistent with how successful businesses have used data for decades to increase their productivity.

Of course, teachers had always assessed learning informally before state- and district-designed tests. Teachers accumulated information (oops! data) from pop quizzes, class discussions, observing students in pairs and small groups, and individual conferences.

Your teachers were not allowed to teach, but were required to focus on preparing you for those all-important standardized tests.

Your teachers were held responsible if you failed, and expected to show that they had tried hard to avoid that dreaded result.

First, I am your professor, not your teacher. There is a difference.

Students in hybrid classrooms outperformed their peers in traditional classes in all grades and subjects, according to the newest study from two organizations that work with schools in establishing hybrid instruction.

The results come out of those classes where students either took the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests or Keystone Exams to measure academic achievement.

In one example, hybrid learning eighth grade math students at Hatboro-Horsham School District (PA) passed the PSSA tests and Keystone Exams at a rate10 percent higher than their non-hybrid peers in five schools.