SUPERINTENDENT DR. JOHN BARRY
SOUTHWICK – The Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School Committee voted last night to give only the MCAS test to students in the next school year.
Superintendent Dr. John Barry said the committee had to decide whether to test students with MCAS or the new PARCC test next year. PARCC is not yet approved by the Department of Education, but is a new test system that is more aligned with the common core curriculum and was designed to be used as a national test.
Barry said there is no guarantee the PARCC will be approved and added that many of the states that originally signed on to use PARCC as a national standardized test have dropped out.
“Is the intent of this still viable?” Barry wondered. “My recommendation is to stay with the MCAS.”
Committee member Jean McGivney-Burelle asked Barry what benefits were offered with the PARCC test.
“They say it’s the next generation of tests, but that’s not a definite,” he said.
Barry did say the online testing of PARCC is the future of student testing. He also said that even if PARCC was adopted, there would still be some aspects of the MCAS given.
“So we would have to be training eighth grades to take PARCC, and they would still have to take some MCAS in high school,” said McGivney-Burelle.
“Yes,” said Barry, “and we may need to flip back [to PARCC] again.”
Barry said if the district participated in PARCC, its accountability would not be impacted by the results. The accountability rate is a scale of one to five, with one being the highest score.
“Right now we’re a two,” Barry said.
The committee took Barry’s recommendation and unanimously voted to keep the MCAS test intact until the PARCC was approved by the state.
