To what extent are teachers responsible for students' success or failure?  The creators of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seemingly want us to accept the premise that a student's and a teacher’s “success” can and should be determined by one test.  And the creators of CCSS want us to believe that teachers are largely responsible for how their students “perform” on that one test. Teacher evaluation systems are not a part of Common Core, but they are fully intertwined with them.  States agreed to these “accountability measures” in the form of evaluations for students and teachers in exchange for federal dollars through the Obama administration’s “Race To The Top” program.  While America was busy watching Dancing with the Stars, the creators of CCSS were making sure that these standards were even further entrenched by tying student outcomes on CCSS state exams to teacher evaluations.  Under...(Read Full Article)