This excerpt is from the following:
http://www.livingindialogue.com/education-reform-lexicon-paradigm-busters/
by Anthony Cody, and you should read it.
The Department of Education in New York convened a panel of educators to set cut scores on the new Pearson Common Core-aligned tests. This article http://www.lohud.com/story/news/education/2014/07/26/common-core-cut-scores-examined/13219981/ spilled the beans about the process.
Tina Good, coordinator of the Writing Center at Suffolk County Community College, said her group produced the best possible cut scores for ELA tests in grades 3 to 6 — playing by the rules they were given.
“We worked within the paradigm Pearson gave us,” she said. “It’s not like we could go, ‘This is what we think third-graders should know,’ or, ‘This will completely stress out our third-graders.’ Many of us had concerns about the pedagogy behind all of this, but we did reach a consensus about the cut scores.”
The result was that this panel of professional educators provided the state of New York with the cut scores that meant only about 30% of the state’s students were ranked proficient.
Saving school math 