Common Core and PARCC......Are they joined at the hip?

Whether by design or by accident, the Common Core and high stakes testing, value added teacher/school evaluations, vouchers, charter schools, and union busting have become inextricably bound together. While I personally disagree with some of what is in this article, Ms. Darling's take on the absurdity of testing is right on and it's worth a read..... 

"In the United States, we use tests in ways they were never intended to be used and in fact are prohibited by the standards that are supposed to guide test use in this country. To mechanically make a decision about whether a student can move forward to the next grade level, whether they'll graduate from high school, whether a teacher will continue to be employed or get merit pay, whether a school will be put into some kind of “failing schools” category and potentially closed down—these uses of tests are really irresponsible. They are unwarranted. By virtue of the fact that we know that tests are always partial and have a lot of errors associated with them, the testing standards always say that you should be using them with other measures. There's nowhere in the world where [this type of high-stakes standardized testing] is done except in the U.S., and it had never been done in the U.S. until the last few years."

http://prospect.org/article/pencils-out