Update: Read below for information on a Montclair Times editorial today.
In an Editorial by The Star Ledger this morning, the paper calls the Montclair assessments leak an act of “sabotage” and tells the responsible party:
You aren’t taking it to the man. You’re taking it to the students. This reform is coming to Montclair no matter what. So how does your act of sabotage help kids?
The editorial goes on to say how the district teachers worked hard through the summer to create the assessments and the sabotage is a blow to the district. It ends admonishing the responsible party:
It’s one thing to publicly criticize new educational standards. It’s another to purposefully undermine them. To those cheering on the supposed defeat of Common Core in Montclair: Get over yourselves, and think of the kids.
The Montclair Times wrote its own Editorial today about Montclair assessments. Titled “Seeking answers to the strategic plan’s assessment,” the writer states that many of the questions on an obtained “mathematics “interim assessment” for fourth-graders are identical to questions created by the state.”
Barista Kids reached out to Superintendent of Schools Dr. MacCormack to address where the questions on the assessments came from.
“The questions came from multiple sources, including the NJDOE model curriculum site, in house text books, the PARCC web site etc. – all questions were reviewed and vetted by the teachers writing the curriculum. There is no need to start from scratch for every question- teachers always use a variety of resources when developing assessments,” Dr. MacCormack replied.
She added, “Curriculum development required our teachers to review large numbers of standards and determine how to define specific learning objectives from those standards. They placed those into units of study and prioritized the most important learning objectives. At that point they reviewed textbooks, websites and other resources for well aligned assessment questions. This is all hard work and should be celebrated not questioned because varied resources were used.”