Except, of course, we don't need Common Core for that goal. I grew up in Florida. Florida had state-wide testing starting in the 1970s. http://www.fldoe.org/ac

Except, of course, we don't need Common Core for that goal. I grew up in Florida. Florida had state-wide testing starting in the 1970s. http://www.fldoe.org/accountability/assessments/k-12-student-assessment/history-of-fls-statewide-assessment/assessment-chronology/hsap7889.stml http://www.fldoe.org/accountability/assessments/k-12-student... . Why wasn't that good enough to compare schools X and Y, and what does Common Core-based testing add to that? All I can think of is it adds a way to compare schools between states. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is suppose to give some idea of how different regions of the US compare, and NAEP started in 1969. Why isn't that enough? Suppose we know that a school in Miami is "performing badly relative to students" in Anchorage? I don't see how that will help make policy decisions. Will we use the result of the test take money that would have gone to Alaska and send it to Florida? Does it mean that people will move to Alaska to be in a better school district? And lastly, what method is used to interpret those test results, and can they be understood by the people (like parents) who need to make decisions? After all, grades depends on more than just the quality of the school. A school in a poor region with many new immigrants who don't speak English well (I'm thinking of parts of Miami in the early 1980s, after the Cuban emigration from Mariel) will likely have low marks. Does that means it's a poor school? The methods I've seen so far, like VAM, are shaky at best. At worst? The NY Supreme Court calls it "arbitrary and capricious", at least as way to set someone's salary.