Unthinkable: Is science being skewed by a gender bias?

Photo: Helen de Cruz

"The status of women in science is distorting not just academia but knowledge itself, says Helen de Cruz." summarizes Joe Humphreys, journalist with The Irish Times, and author of the weekly ‘Unthinkable’ philosophy column.

“Many people were so impressed by Mary Somerville it made a difference.” portrait by Thomas Phillips.

It has been a sobering time lately for men who are being collectively accused of unconscious gender bias. 

The representation of women on ballot papers, in theatre programmes and on the airwaves is under scrutiny like never before, and it’s only right that this column join in that process of self-examination.

A count of contributors to the column since it began two years ago shows that only 19 of 79 contributors (24 per cent) were women. A reprehensible total, albeit today at least marks number 20 thanks to Helen de Cruz, assistant professor of philosophy at VU University Amsterdam.

De Cruz, who is addressing the annual conference of the Society for Women in Philosophy Ireland in Dublin at the weekend (www.swip-ireland.com/), points out that biases are “difficult to counteract even if one is aware of them”. In this she references philosopher of science Helen Longino who, through her writings on the way in which knowledge evolves, provides today’s idea: “The greater the number of different points of view included in a community, the more likely its scientific practices will be objective.”

Your lecture at the conference is on “The Under-representation of Women as Science Communicators and its Societal and Epistemic Consequences”. What are those consequences? Helen de Cruz: “Women are seriously under-represented as science communicators. This counts for both the high-profile science communicators such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye “the science guy”, Stephen Hawking and so on as for scientists who want to communicate their own findings, where male scientists do this to a much greater extent than female scientists, even if you take into account seniority and position.

“When it turned out that the person behind ‘I fucking love science’ was a woman (Elise Andrew), there were lots of sexist comments, such as ‘You mean you’re a girl, AND you’re beautiful? Wow, I just liked science a lil bit more today’.

“For most people, the media - TV, internet and so on – are the only place where they hear about scientific findings. If the communicators of such findings are men, we’re likely ending up with a biased picture of science.

“These are the epistemic consequences, which have to do with what we can know. When women do not communicate their findings, their voices are effectively silenced.

“As for societal consequences, when science communicators are men it reinforces the impression that science is not for women or girls. This is illustrated by Mary Somerville, a prominent science populariser in the 19th century. Many people were so impressed by her it made a real difference. For instance, Somerville College, the second women’s college in Oxford, was named after her to allow women to have an Oxford education.”

How does unconscious gender bias affect scientific research? “There are several lines of evidence that gender bias affects scientific research. One of these is simply the range of topics that is being studied.

Read more...

Source: Irish Times  

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution by David Wootton review – a big bang moment

Photo: Lorraine Daston

"The birth of science in Europe was the greatest revolution of all, argues this dazzling polemic" and according to Lorraine Daston, director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

William Blake’s 1795 portrait of Isaac Newton.
Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

What is modernity and when did it begin? The answer depends a lot on the nationality and specialism of the historian you ask. Italians favour the achievements of Renaissance art and humanism, as early as the 14th century; northern Europeans opt for the period when cities such as Amsterdam, Paris and London rose to economic and cultural prominence, from the early 16th through to the 18th centuries; some historians of Germany would go as late as 1900. Philosophers are likely to zero in on Descartes in the mid-17th century; economists hold out for the industrial revolution in the late 18th century; political historians push for the American and French revolutions. Beyond Europe, many more periods and places jostle for attention. Everyone has a dog in this fight.

David Wootton’s answer is unequivocal: modernity began with the scientific revolution in Europe, bookended by the dates 1572 (when the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe identified a new star in the heavens) and 1704 (when Isaac Newton published Opticks). This was “the most important transformation in human history” since the Neolithic era. Later events such as the industrial revolution were no more than the extended consequences of the biggest revolution of them all. Wootton is equally clear about whether the scientific revolution was a matter for celebration (as most Enlightenment thinkers saw it) or regret (as some Romantics felt): it was, in his view, a very good thing indee

Compressed into a few sentences, the major theses of this book sound unsurprising. The scientific revolution was not just the motor of modern history, it was the model of modernity. Rational, calculating, advancing at breakneck speed, respecting no authority: science after Newton seemed to embody the power and ever expanding possibilities of a society fixated on the future rather than the past. This is the narrative upon which university professorships and whole departments of the history of science were established after the second world war, and the narrative that a whole generation of historians of science were weaned on.

Yet Wootton believes that historians of what he calls the “post-Kuhn generation” (after the American historian Thomas Kuhn’s influential Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which recast the history of science in the mould of evolution rather than progress) – that is, roughly those who came of age in the 1980s and 90s – have broken with the faith and denied the scientific revolution’s significance as “the big bang” moment of modernity, querying each one of those three words. While they maintain that the understanding of nature was transformed in early modern Europe, recent research on many fronts – anatomy, astronomy, natural history, chemistry, mechanics, physics, medicine, civil and military engineering – has cast doubt on whether these changes constituted a “big bang”.

Wootton’s aim is to offer a new interpretation of what he contends still deserves to be called the scientific revolution. This makes for a big book, with some historiographical chapters (and appendices) that are unlikely to be of interest to readers who are not historians of science over the age of 50. At its core, however, are remarkable essays on the vocabulary of the age of discovery, including terms such as facts, experiments, laws, hypotheses, theories, evidence and judgment. Drawing on a dazzling array of texts, Wootton traces a dawning consciousness that natural knowledge need not be certain to be reliable; that pell-mell experience can be systematised and sharpened by observation and experiment; and that empirical inquiry is of necessity collective.

The great strength of this approach is also its weakness: it is all about texts. If there was one thing the 17th-century proponents of the new philosophy were adamant about, it was that their ways of thinking were about things as well as words. Wootton mentions in passing that improvements in, for example, glass-blowing were a precondition for early experiments on air pressure, and he is alert to how double-entry bookkeeping may have provided a template for other sorts of mathematical abstraction. Yet he underplays how practices such as keeping a commonplace book and achieving high temperatures in a furnace were creatively adapted to new purposes. These connections provide the strongest evidence both for the continuity of new knowledge with old, and for its exuberant originality in hybridising scholarly and practical skills.
Read more... 

Additional resources

The Invention of Science by David Wootton goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new worldview. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts—Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton, and many more curious minds from across Europe—whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition. 

Source: The Guardian

Problem-Based Learning: Six Steps to Design, Implement, and Assess by Vincent R. Genareo, PhD, and Renee Lyons

Photo: Vincent Genareo

Vincent R. Genareo, postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University, Research Institute for Studies of Education (RISE) and Renee Lyons, PhD candidate at Clemson University, Department of Education writes, "Twenty-first century skills necessitate the implementation of instruction that allows students to apply course content, take ownership of their learning, use technology meaningfully, and collaborate. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is one pedagogical approach that might fit in your teaching toolbox." 
 

Photo: Faculty Focus

PBL is a student-centered, inquiry-based instructional model in which learners engage with an authentic, ill-structured problem that requires further research (Jonassen & Hung, 2008). Students identify gaps in their knowledge, conduct research, and apply their learning to develop solutions and present their findings (Barrows, 1996). Through collaboration and inquiry, students can cultivate problem solving (Norman & Schmidt, 1992), metacognitive skills (Gijbels et al., 2005), engagement in learning (Dochy et al., 2003), and intrinsic motivation. Despite PBL’s potential benefits, many instructors lack the confidence or knowledge to utilize it (Ertmer & Simons, 2006; Onyon, 2005). By breaking down the PBL cycle into six steps, you can begin to design, implement, and assess PBL in your own courses.

Step One: Identify Outcomes/Assessments  
PBL fits best with process-oriented course outcomes such as collaboration, research, and problem solving. It can help students acquire content or conceptual knowledge, or develop disciplinary habits such as writing or communication. After determining whether your course has learning outcomes that fit with PBL, you will develop formative and summative assessments to measure student learning. Group contracts, self/peer-evaluation forms, learning reflections, writing samples, and rubrics are potential PBL assessments.
 
Step Two: Design the Scenario  
Next you design the PBL scenario with an embedded problem that will emerge through student brainstorming. Think of a real, complex issue related to your course content. It’s seldom difficult to identify lots of problems in our fields; the key is writing a scenario for our students that will elicit the types of thinking, discussion, research, and learning that need to take place to meet the learning outcomes. Scenarios should be motivating, interesting, and generate good discussion. Check out the websites below for examples of PBL problems and scenarios. 
Read more...

Source: Faculty Focus

Helping Students Find a Good College Match

Checkout and attend this event for free! 


Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015 2 to 3 p.m. ET.
 
Finding a college that's a good fit is challenging for any student, but especially for those who are the first in their families to attend college. In this webinar, we'll hear how one high school counselor helps her first-generation students navigate the college-planning maze. And we'll review national research that can offer guidance about the best ways to help first-generation and low-income students avoid key stumbling blocks on the road to college.
Register Now
 
Guests:
Jessica Howell, executive director of research, College Board
Lauren Quigley, director of college counseling, Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria (New York)

Moderator:
Catherine Gewertz, associate editor, Education Week

Source: Education Week  

Free complimentary webinar: Building Apps Without Coding for Use in Training

Attend this complimentary webinar below.
 

Building Apps Without Coding for Use in Training
Date: Wednesday, December 9, 2015 
Time: NOON Pacific / 3 PM Eastern (60-Minute Session)

The explosion of apps is undeniable. Is there any use for apps in your training? There certainly is a good case for it. And even if with a good case to use apps in your learning and training delivery, could you even create one yourself? Sophisticated app production can cost thousands of dollars and take months. There is an option to build simple apps for free and no coding knowledge required.

Neal Rowland will show you how to create an app and have it ready to publish, if you choose to, by the end of the 3 hour hands on session at the Training Magazine conference in Orlando in February. For now, in this session, see what is possible with your app and some things to consider in developing your own apps.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• Why you may wish to build apps for your training needs  
• Possibilities for using apps in various training situations  
• Resources to build your own apps with no coding required

Speaker: Neal Rowland, Author, Curriculum Manager at Plex Systems, Inc. 
Register Now

About Neal Rowland

Photo: Neal Rowland

Neal Rowland is an instructor, author, instructional designer and technically an app developer too.  Even with little or no programming skill, Neal has developed in house training apps as well as apps available worldwide in the Microsoft Store.  Here is one such example Drawn Out Project Management.

Neal currently works a Plex, a manufacturing software company in the Detroit area, as well as freelancing in course development, delivery, and content creation.  Most of his work is in project management, IT service management, and agile project management.  He was a contributor to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK), the international standard of project management. He was exposed to the idea of building apps during his tenure at Microsoft in Redmond.

Source: Training Magazine Network

Laura Devaney will be bringing you a news round-up each week

Follow on Twitter as @eSN_Laura

Check out Laura Devaney, Director of News, K-12 and Higher Education news round-up each Friday.

Catch up on the most compelling higher-ed news stories you may have missed this week.
 

In this week's news, technology dominates many of higher-education's top terms and buzzwords; federal recommendations address accreditation; virtual reality claims a spot on campus; and a new college selection algorithm claims to pair students with their top school. 

Photo: eCampus News

10 higher education buzzwords and phrases
From buzzwords to phrases higher-ed speakers and leaders love to use, it seems there’s a whole new vocabulary—that some call “edubabble”—developed every couple of years. What’s interesting to note in these higher education buzzwords and phrases of 2015 is that many are either directly technology-related or are based on new technology functionalities.
Read more...

4 federal recommendations to improve accreditation
In the wake of online learning, competency-based education, and a host of other alternative pathways and programs, accreditation has been in the reformation spotlight this year. And now the government is jumping in.
Read more...

Science develops an algorithm for college selection—but does it work?  
A new algorithm is using data and predictive analytics to determine, with noteworthy accuracy (90 percent), which institution is the best match for students.
Read more...

Colleges begin to take virtual reality seriously
Virtual reality (VR) is emerging as a powerful technology, projected to grow into a $30 billion industry in the next 5 years. But when it comes to higher education, has VR’s dramatic rise impacted colleges and universities?
Read more...

Source: eCampus News

Teaching Peace in Elementary School by Julie Scelfo

Julie-scelfo-pencil-art
Copyright 2015 Nick Galifianakis

"FOR years, there has been a steady stream of headlines about the soaring mental health needs of college students and their struggles with anxiety and lack of resilience." according to Julie Scelfo, former staff writer for The New York Times who writes often about human behavior.

Now, a growing number of educators are trying to bolster emotional competency not on college campuses, but where they believe it will have the greatest impact: in elementary schools.

In many communities, elementary teachers, guidance counselors and administrators are embracing what is known as social and emotional learning, or S.E.L., a process through which people become more aware of their feelings and learn to relate more peacefully to others.

Photo: Sophie Lécuyer

Feeling left out? Angry at your mom? Embarrassed to speak out loud during class? Proponents of S.E.L. say these feelings aren’t insignificant issues to be ignored in favor of the three R’s. Unless emotions are properly dealt with, they believe, children won’t be able to reach their full academic potential.

“It’s not just about how you feel, but how are you going to solve a problem, whether it’s an academic problem or a peer problem or a relationship problem with a parent,” said Mark T. Greenberg, a professor of human development and psychology at Pennsylvania State University.

Echoing the concept of “emotional intelligence,” popularized in the 1990s by Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book of the same name, he added, “The ability to get along with others is really the glue of healthy human development.”...

“The neural pathways in the brain that deal with stress are the same ones that are used for learning,” said Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, a research and teaching center. “Schools are realizing that they have to help kids understand their feelings and manage them effectively.” He added, “We, as a country, want our kids to achieve more academically, but we can’t do this if our kids aren’t emotionally healthy.”...

In a recent study, researchers from Penn State and Duke looked at 753 adults who had been evaluated for social competency nearly 20 years earlier while in kindergarten: Scores for sharing, cooperating and helping other children nearly always predicted whether a person graduated from high school on time, earned a college degree, had full-time employment, lived in public housing, received public assistance or had been arrested or held in juvenile detention.

Read more... 

Source: The New York Times

FREE Tech Dossier | The New IT Acronym: KISSME (Keep IT Security Simple, Manageable and Effective)

Computing environments have evolved to enable users to be more productive and IT to be more agile. 

And yet attackers have evolved their methods too, adopting polymorphic malware to evade detection by preventive controls. Meanwhile, IT organizations continue to practice a piecemeal, reactive process of plugging holes, and it's putting companies at grave risk.
 

http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/business/whitepapers.html

Bitdefender writes, "This is your wake-up call."
There’s no doubt about it: IT organizations have their work cut out for them when it comes to security. In 2014 the “State of the CSO” report, an annual survey conducted by  CSO  magazine, provided some perspective on the scope of the problem.

• The most significant challenges CSOs face:Managing security of and addressing risks surrounding mobile devices and bring-your-own-device (BYOD)
• Cyberthreats from outside the organization, including APTs and distributed denial of service (DDOS)
• Security for technology as a service and cloud computing

Although there are commonalities among these three categories, there’s also a lot of variation within each one. Mobile device security is rarely a matter of managing a single platform across the entire enterprise.  Users want to use the device of their choice at any time, wherever they happen to be. The risk posed by cyberthreats varies from one system to another, and no two cloud-based services share the same risk profile. Risk management becomes exponentially more complex with the addition of each new technology.
Get your FREE Tech Dossier today and get ahead of the competition! 

Source: Bitdefender

The Impact of Apple on IT in 2016 webinar

Attend this free webinar as Nick Thompson and Tad Johnson look at the new direction of Apple IT and ways to leverage it to your advantage.

Register today!

2015 has been a momentous year for Apple. With new hardware and software releases and enhancements to their deployment programs, Apple is making a conscious effort to go beyond individual consumers and reach more businesses and schools around the world.

In our webinar, The Impact of Apple on IT in 2016, we’ll take a retrospective look at the strides Apple has made and examine what the future holds for Apple.

IT. In this webinar, we'll cover:

• Key Apple partnerships and announcements in 2015
• Apple and industry trends for 2016
• The significance of these trends for Apple IT and users

When: 
December 2, 2015 (Wednesday) 2:00-2:30pm GMT (London)

Who:

Nick Thompson
Solutions Architect

Tad Johnson
Solutions Architect

 

Join us December 2nd from 2:00 – 2:30 p.m. GMT; 3:00 – 3:30 p.m. CET.
Register today!

Source: JAMF Software

Test - What is Your IQ According to Your Facebook Posts?

Take a look at this test - What is Your IQ According to Your Facebook Posts?

Ready to feel very super exceptionally superior?
Take the test yourself.

Enjoy, but I would not describe it as nothing more than amusement !!!

Source: cooltest.me

‘Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs,’ by Lisa Randall

Photo: Maria Popova. 
Photograph by Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times

Book reviewed by Maria Popova, founder of BrainPickings.org and an M.I.T. Futures of Entertainment fellow.

Photo: Lisa Randall

"QDark matter may be responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs and the subsequent rise of mammals.", according to Lisa Randall.

A good theory is an act of the informed imagination — it reaches toward the unknown while grounded in the firmest foundations of the known. In “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs,” the Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall proposes that a thin disk of dark matter in the plane of the Milky Way triggered a minor perturbation in deep space that caused the major earthly catastrophe that decimated the dinosaurs. It’s an original theory that builds on a century of groundbreaking discoveries to tell the story of how the universe as we know it came to exist, how dark matter illuminates its beguiling unknowns and how the physics of elementary particles, the physics of space, and the biology of life intertwine in ways both bewildering and profound.

Photo: New York Times

If correct, Randall’s theory would require us to radically reappraise some of our most fundamental assumptions about the universe and our own existence. Sixty-­six million years ago, according to her dark-matter disk model, a tiny twitch caused by an invisible force in the far reaches of the cosmos hurled a comet three times the width of Manhattan toward Earth at least 700 times the speed of a car on a freeway. The collision produced the most powerful earthquake of all time and released energy a billion times that of an atomic bomb, heating the atmosphere into an incandescent furnace that killed three-quarters of Earthlings. No creature heavier than 55 pounds, or about the size of a Dalmatian, survived. The death of the dinosaurs made possible the subsequent rise of mammalian dominance, without which you and I would not have evolved to ponder the perplexities of the cosmos.

A necessary primer: Dark matter is the invisible cosmic stuff that, like ordinary matter — which makes up the stars and the stardust, you and me and everything we know — interacts with gravity but, unlike ordinary matter, doesn’t interact with light. Although scientists know that dark matter exists and accounts for a staggering 85 percent of the universe — billions of dark-­matter particles are passing through you this very second — they don’t yet know what it’s made of. For Randall the possibilities within that mystery are among the most thrilling frontiers of human ­knowledge.

Ordinary matter contains an entire ecosystem of particles — among them various quarks and neutrinos, the electron, and the newly discovered Higgs boson. So far, scientists have assumed that dark matter comprises only one type of particle. Randall, however, posits that dark matter might also comprise a variety of building blocks that interact through different forces. No prior theory has considered the simple yet profound possibility that while most dark matter doesn’t interact with ordinary matter, a portion of it might. Because dark matter carries five times the energy of ordinary matter, that tiny fraction could have enormous ­consequences...

As stimulating as the substance of the book is, however, Randall doesn’t quite join the ranks of such masterly science-­storytellers as Stephen Jay Gould, Diane Ackerman, Alan Lightman or James Gleick. Giants like the late Oliver Sacks — working scientists who are also enchanting writers — come about once or twice a century, if we’re lucky. Randall is first and foremost a working scientist — but while she isn’t a natural storyteller of Sacks’s caliber, she is an excellent explainer, and her affection for her subject matter is infectious...

Therein lies the book’s greatest reward — the gift of perspective. The existence of parallel truths is what gives our world its tremendous richness, and the grand scheme of things is far grander than our minds habitually imagine. “The future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens,” Rilke wrote. Although it took the deadly comet an immeasurably long time to reach its earthly victims, the dinosaurs’ destiny — and, in consequence, our own — was sealed in the cosmic blink when dark matter jolted that icy body out of orbit. It’s a sobering revelation of the gestational period of consequences. As Randall peers into the universe’s 13.8-­billion-year history, she notes that in her lifetime alone, human population has more than doubled, straining Earth’s resources and undermining cosmic work billions of years in the making. Although her periodicity model projects that a major meteoroid isn’t expected to hit us for another 32 million years or so, our civilization’s impact on the planet is like that of a slow-moving comet headed for doom — but unlike the one that killed the dinosaurs, Randall reminds us, we still have a chance to avert its course.
Read more... 

Additional resources

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs:
The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe.

In this brilliant exploration of our cosmic environment, the renowned particle physicist and New York Times bestselling author of Warped Passages and Knocking on Heaven’s Door uses her research into dark matter to illuminate the startling connections between the furthest reaches of space and life here on Earth.
Books by Lisa Randall

Lisa Randall -  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Source: New York Times     

Augmented Reality – A Reality Today

Photo: Vishal Saxena

Vishal Saxena, partner and co-founder of eWorkz reports, "For many years, virtual reality was, and still is, a very popular method of visualising reality." 

Virtual reality is computer-simulated reality; it simulates a real environment to artificially create an experience that can address your senses, including sight, hearing, touch and smell.

But virtual reality is slowly becoming passé. Say hello to Augmented Reality!

Eworkz Demo 
 

 
 

What is augmented reality?

Imagine a situation where you are using a map to navigate to an unfamiliar place. You need to know what the place looks like so you can identify it when you see it. Augmented reality does this for you. Using augmented reality, you can see the map on one half of your screen and on the other half, you can not only see the place, you can also see the current situation in that place, is there a traffic jam, is the store closed, or even if any renovation is being done, provided of course, you have the requisite software and appropriate cameras have been set up at these locations.

If you were to compare virtual reality and augmented reality, virtual reality is a simulation of the world and augmented reality is closer to the real world.  The increasing speed of internet, blends the physical and the virtual world together to create augmented reality.
Read more...

About eWorkz 

 
eWorkz is a professionally managed company that specializes in offering learning content and creative services using technology, to effectively address learning needs. Our focus is on building SCORM-compliant bespoke content for corporates.
Collectively, our leadership team has in excess of hundred person years of experience in the learning domain. We have successfully managed and delivered various learning projects across the globe. Our trained team rigorously adhere to toll-gate based development process and follow a judicious balance of efficiency and effectiveness.

Source: eWorkz: Global Learning Partners and Eworkz Channel (YouTube)

Study analyzes NAEP, Common Core math alignment

"Panel urges addition of more math content to NAEP math framework upon next revision." summarizes eSchool News.

Photo: eSchool News

A new study of the math alignment between the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), adopted by most states, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the longtime barometer of academic achievement among the nation’s students, found “reasonable agreement” overall but also some areas of 4th and 8th grade math where there was less of a match.


The study, the second in a series of three examining the relationship between NAEP and the Common Core State Standards in math, was conducted by 18 math educators, supervisors and mathematicians convened by the NAEP Validity Studies Panel (NVS), an independent panel charged with examining issues related to the validity of the NAEP assessments.

The panel found that 79 percent of NAEP items in 4th grade math assessed content included in the CCSS at grade 4 or below. However, the match rate was lower in some areas: 47 percent for data analysis, statistics, and probability, 62 percent for algebra and 68 percent for geometry.

In the 8th grade, 87 percent of NAEP items assessed math included in the CCSS at grade 8 or below—a degree of alignment the report described as “strong.” At the same time, the authors found that 42 percent of the Common Core State Standards for grades 6, 7, and 8 were not being tested by any items in the 2015 NAEP item pool.

The report’s authors suggest that the National Assessment Governing Board, the bipartisan body that sets policy for the testing program, consider adding content from these areas to NAEP’s mathematics framework when it is next revised.

The panel found that most of the differences reflect the CCSS’s intention to shift instruction in certain topics to later grades. The extent to which instruction has actually been aligned with the CCSS is beyond the scope of the study, which examines only the relationship between test items and standards. The authors note that changing standards is far simpler and faster than the arduous process of changing curriculum and instruction.
Read more...

Related link 
New Study Examines Alignment Between NAEP and Common Core State Standards in 4th, 8th Grade Mathematics.

Source: eSchool News