Dr. David Hopson
PARCC – the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers—involves a consortium of 19 states and has the potential to replace the current MCAS tests. While the assessment protocol includes a number of tests, the current understanding is there will be two tests if Massachusetts adopts PARCC: the Performance Based Assessment (or PBA) and the End of year Assessment (or EOY) in English Language Arts and Mathematics. We’re told that there are compelling reasons for potentially switching from MCAS to PARCC – a test that’s more closely aligned to the new Common Core Curriculum standards, a broader base of students across the U.S. to compare student performance with, a quicker turn-around time from testing to getting the test results (due to the tests being computer-based), and financial savings over the Commonwealth having to develop their own new test. PARCC has an FAQ page with more details at https://www.parcconline.org/sites/parcc/files/PARCCFAQ_9-18-2013.pdf.
As part of the development process, students across the PARCC states were chosen to ‘pilot’ the tests. These pilot tests returned no scores to the students, the school, or the district; did not involve receiving any additional financial resources to run the tests; and do not count towards determining student performance this year. The positive aspects were the experience in preparing equipment, students, and staff to pilot the test with a small group of students in advance of the potential rollout across grades 3-8 in the 2014-2015 school year.
Gateway successfully completed ‘piloting’ the Performance Based Assessment (PBA) for mathematics with a small group of students taking the test on computers (there were some schools that piloted the test not using computers). In preparing for, and completing, this pilot test we noted a number of issues that we’ll have to address if the state moves in this direction. One issue is finding, acquiring, and preparing enough computers (laptops, desktops, tablets) that meet the testing requirements for a much larger group of students. What we’ve found is that about 50% of our computers, which are only a few years old, cannot be used for PARCC testing. In addition, each computer has to be reimaged for the test, and then returned to the original image for use in the classroom, which was a time consuming process. Another issue is ensuring enough bandwidth within the schools for testing numerous students at the same time, especially using a wireless network. Related to this is a need for additional time to train staff and students on using computers to take these tests, which are significantly different from our current computer-based assessments. Another challenge of switching to PARCC, which requires more higher-level thinking skills and involves much more reading, interpreting, and creating answers (including pulling relevant information from a number of provided resources, without having the ability to have multiple documents in front of you at one time) is that this is far from what is routinely done in the classroom.
While I think this is a move in the right direction, the lack of resources (including time and money) to prepare for such a significant change and the failure to move beyond primarily testing knowledge (and leaving out many of the skills that are in demand in the marketplace) seems shortsighted. As citizens in the new ‘digital’ society, many of our students are very good at using a wide range of electronic resources to complete work, but these are denied to them while taking these tests. This is a little like testing students on driving a horse and buggy to determine if they’re eligible to get a license to drive a car.
