Last night, the school board in Cambridge, Massachusetts, voted to delay the implementation of PARCC, one of the two federally-funded online Common Core assessments. This was something of a problem for Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, because he is chair of the governing board of PARCC.
The Cambridge School Committee acted in response to a parent petition. Parents are concerned about teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, and relying on online testing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Props to The ‘Peoples Republic of Cambridge’
I recommend that this response be made henceforth, forever.
“When are you going to the PARCC?”
“Maybe next year.”
PARCC
Spell that backward.
Good work parents and anyone else who signed that petition!
A mini celebration going on here. Not dancing in the streets quite yet.
Mitchell Chester, one of the infamous ‘deformers’, should encounter and deal with many cities and towns like Cambridge! He will then learn a little about democracy- in- action. But, then, again, he is, at this point,most likely well be beyond professional (if not personnel) redemption.
This may be a dumb question, edu-experts, but what does this mean? It’s from the PARCC site and it’s about NM higher ed meeting with K-12 to talk PARCC:
“The objective of the meeting was to communicate the importance of the Common Core and PARCC assessments for measuring college readiness and aligning expectations from K-12 to higher education, update participants on the progress of PARCC implementation and identify opportunities to become involved in the development of the assessments, develop a shared understanding of the Common Core and assist institutions of higher education in preparing to partner with K-12 schools to use the assessments to support students during their senior year, and assist institutions of higher education in preparing to incorporate the PARCC scores into their campus placement practices and policies.”
So PARCC scores in HS will be used for placement in college classes? Or is that just remediation – high PARCC scorers don’t need remediation?
http://www.parcconline.org/new-mexico-statewide-postsecondary-convening
And so it begins. Yet another set of high stakes attached to these exams. It isn’t enough that whether students will be able to graduate will be tied to these invalid exams. Now whether they can get into a college and what classes they will have to take in college will also be determined by them.
And this is JUST THE BEGINNING. Gates has been giving a lot of speeches lately about the necessity of creating standardized exams at the post-secondary level.
I don’t know if it’s “high stakes”. I think it will depend on how the tests are used, and that will depend on the state.
I do think it’s wrong to announce the tests are “not high stakes to children” (although they will be to teachers and schools, and “teachers and schools” affect students) without knowing how they’ll be used, because the truth is no one knows how they will be used.
The promoters should say “we don’t know how they’ll be used” because they don’t.
If these tests are contributing to decisions about what students to enroll and what classes those students must take, both of which are mentioned in this, then those are high stakes, aren’t they?
The ed reform crowd really need to stay away from colleges. The implications are too scary.
Too late. There are running laboratory projects at colleges around the country right now. Gates is making the rounds of the right-wing think tanks giving chats about the need for standardized tests for college students (so we can really compare outcomes from various schools) and about how to save enormous amounts of money by replacing professors with software.
cx: They (the deformer) are running
Yikes. Sorry. In a hurry here because I’m working on a project.
Too late. The ed deformers are already running various “laboratory projects” at colleges around the country. Gates is making the rounds of the right-wing think tanks, where he is giving chats about the need for standardized tests for college students (so we can really compare outcomes from various schools) and about how we can make college affordable by replacing professors with software. He has also been pushing the idea of stack ranking colleges, which Obama has already picked up and turned into a proposal for a new college rating system.
And the moment Gates started giving these talks, the think tanks started responding with op-ed pieces touting these very ideas.
The deformers very definitely see the CCSS at Prek-12 as just the beginning.
An unqualified answer (in both senses of the word), to the question about the New Mexico PARCC meeting.
1. Coercion
2. A defense strategy against parent pushback
3. Profit opportunity
Yes, a “passing” score on the Algebra II PARCC test guarantees placement in a non-remedial college class. I wonder how colleges will respond to this.
Mainly parents have the power to stop this abuse.
There are just too many tests, and they are misused:
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/
Why has so little attention been given to the research of Michael Kapland? His experiments with how caged animals learn can be associated with how “caged children’ learn in the CCSS environment:
Michael Kaplan illustrated several different experiments involving caged animals where some had no toys and others had learning exercises and stimulating toys. In every single one of his caged animal experiments, the results were always the same. The animals who participated in the learning tasks and consistently played with toys demonstrated increased brain cell growth and maintenance of their mature cells. Meaning that our environment plays a much larger role in determining our intellect than our genes do. There is no doubt that both play an essential role in our intelligence but the lack of a stimulating environment will, without doubt, hamper your abilities to become smarter.
Can we keep repeating that last sentence to Bill Gates & followers and TWEET, FB:
Lack of a stimulating environment will, without doubt, hamper your abilities to become smarter!!!
Read more at: http://www.learning-mind.com/the-neuroscience-behind-increasing-your-intellect/#more-7896
CCSS has got to GO
Refuse the Test and Just Say NO!
Kaplan was probably referring to the infamous experiments conducted with wire-frame versus terry cloth “mothers” (bottle feeders) at the Yerkes Primate Institute. Classic. Appalling.