This is a terrific article about the Common Core test results. It explains in layman’s language how the test scores are calculated and converted to scale scores.

When you read the “results” in the newspaper or get the results for your child or your class, you need to understand that the “scores” are not really scores:

The only things that have been released are percentages of students who supposedly meet “proficiency” levels. Those are not test scores—certainly not what parents would understand as scores. They are entirely subjective measurements.

Here’s why. When a child takes a standardized test, his or her results are turned into a “raw score,” that is, the actual number of questions answered correctly, or when an answer is worth more than one point, the actual number of points the child received. That is the only real objective “score,” and yet, Common Core raw scores have not…