Mercedes Schneider describes the remarkable shrinkage of states enrolled to give Pearson’s Common Core PARCC test from 2011-2014.
In 2011, Pearson boasted that 31 million students in 25 states plus D.C. Would take PARCC. By 2014, the numbers are down to 10 states and D.C. with 5 million students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m so sad that Ohio is one of the 10 states to administer the PARCC. I loved my old standards in Ohio, and I dearly miss my old standards. They were very good standards. It has been very depressing for me to teach the new common core this year. I just cannot get used to the new common core. I will always believe they are developmentally inappropriate for our students. There are priceless concepts now completely missing from the new common core curriculum. I taught those valuable concepts and skills for years – – that I no longer teach. It has been very hard for me to adjust.
When I return to school in January, I will be wasting MULTIPLE days in practice PARCC testing. I desperately need these practice PARCC testing days to teach! I pray every morning before I leave my car. There is nothing more I can do except teach the best I can every day and give my students love and support every day in the classroom. My hands are tied due to the poor and greedy leadership of John Kasich. I am so stressed these days that I am very grateful that I do not have to suffer that much longer with PARCC and all of this painful testing. It will end for me, but not for my students and the younger teachers. It’s all so sad. Our Ohio students will come out learning so much less. It is a very painful process to observe.
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Why is there not a requirement to include built in calculators for all online tests to level the playing field for students required to do online tests?
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Most online tests include an embedded calculator as a universal accessibility feature for sections of the assessment where a calculator is allowed. Certainly PARCC and SBAC assessments do.
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Unfortunately, 10 states are still on the PARCC roster! That is 10 too many. An also equally “unfortunate” is that the states that dropped PARCC are required to create an “equivalent” Arne Duncan – approved test “or else”…
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Going to talk to my state rep on Tuesday about why MA is still one of the ten!
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In large part, it’s because Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Education, is the President of PAARC.
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Christine, I just sent you a friend request. I’m that furry brown creature.
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There’s a strong bipartisan movement to oust Mitchell Chester. We can and should support that.
Two distinct strands are threatening public education with destruction, exploitation and privatization. They’ve reached a point of confrontation here in Massachusetts.
1. Regulatory capture of the management and control of the public system through accountability laws and mandated high-stakes testing, especially through “technology” capture, by corporations like Pearson.
2. Fragmentation and degradation of the public school system through accountability laws and mandated diversion of resources through charters and vouchers, creating profit-centers for networks of online control and curriculum distribution, by corporations like Pearson.
These Pearson-backed strategies meet in the hands of big players like Gates and Jeb Bush, but they serve contradictory clients as their effects radiate from the center of the web. So, there’s now open war among the rival profiteering constituencies of the same masters, right here in our state. Legislators kept the charter cap in place, asking aloud, “Wait. What’s their end-game?” School committees are voting to take their individual districts out of the PARCC trial, and demanding Chester’s resignation for conflict-of-interest.
When Baker takes control, Pioneer Institute expects to return to the drivers seat, but Peyser has been off at New Schools Venture Fund consorting with Gates and Broad. Local players want to keep their MCAS machinery, instead of handing the Commonwealth schools over to Democrats for Ed Reform hedgefunders. Parents what to opt their kids and their schools out of the whole profit-driven test grinder.
Let’s finesse a trick or two, and make democracy the deciding factor. The people can stop both of them, while the’re busy navigating the split.
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I’m afraid it is a complete federal take over of education in order to turn our helpless children into robots. I’m also afraid that the feds will also continue to try and take away local control from our boards so they cannot keep favorite and valued teachers due to
a horribly flawed evaluation system. I think it is awful that this department that has done so much damage to education was only established in 1979. The department needs totally eliminated.
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And, Ohio is still planning to do the PARCC … and districts are loading up with technology and teachers are frantic. Technology isn’t perfect and by the time they get this all figured out, it will CHANGE again.
Money is being spent on tech, not on teachers. Money is spent on teacher professional development. Time is spent on practice exercises, and on training as to how to click and drag effectively and other computer issues that they might run into while test taking. Classes herded into the cafeteria on the last day before Christmas break to let them know what to expect. Merry Christmas.
Chromebooks. Too small. Font too small. Hard to use the touch mouse. Screens too dim. Font too thin. Glare from fluorescent lights is not pleasant. Kids don’t all have a regular mouse to bring in.
The thrill has worn off for middle school kids. They find the chromebooks something that just represents more work.
Yet, teachers’ salaries are diminishing. Teachers are retiring early. Teachers are worn out. Teachers are always on their toes as to meeing someone else’s idea of “best practices”. Bulletin boards are more communications boards. Everyone is tring so hard.
But, worst of all is the amount of time and money wasted on this stuff. And, the resulting loss of morale, jobs, hope, interest, etc. What is going on?
I am sad.
Merry Christmas.
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PARCC will implode in Ohio. Then all the politicians will claim they were against PARCC before they were for it. The new speaker, Rosenberger, is not a strong supporter of Common Core. But being Republican, neither is he a supporter of teachers and education.
PARCC was imposed on classrooms with no plan and poorly implemented. While OGT was a poor test, PARCC is shaping up to be a disaster.
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Well, when kids need special sessions to get all hyped up on how to use the computer correctly, there is something wrong!!
I have heard that some have said that the paper and pencil tests were easier so they will be making them harder to provide equally difficult tests because of the issues with technology. Soooo, the paper and pencil tests will be made more difficult in content. HOW is this an equitable test? How can scores be compared? How can VAM/AYP have any relevance at all during the transition? This whole idea is poorly executed! And STUPID.7
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CCSS assessments, in any form, were never intended to test and measure basic, minimal, grade level skills and knowledge in math or ELA. This idea was not even on the reformers radar screens. Nor were they intended to measure higher order, critical thinking skills given the FACT that the basic MC format CANNOT do this. It’s a bit like saying we will measure Bill Gates ego using a triple beam balance.
The intended result was as easy to produce as it is devious: the maximum acceptable failure rate. Period. End of story. These tests are traps designed to trick, confuse, frustrate, wear down, and tire out the vast majority of young test takers. As a former. part time, consultant item writer I can make this claim with near 100% certainty. The sample items I’ve seen wouldn’t get paste the waste basket at Measured Progress, unless it was just what the client ordered.
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” HOW is this an equitable test? How can scores be compared? How can VAM/AYP have any relevance at all during the transition?”
Well considering that Noel Wilson has proven the COMPLETE INVALIDITY* of educational standards and the accompanying standardized tests the answers to your questions are quite obvious, that using the results of these educational malpractices is ILLOGICAL, INVALID AND UNETHICAL. Or as I say it’s a bunch of mental masturbation that may feel good but is lacking in substance and satisfaction.
*To understand why see: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
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My questions were rhetorical…
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I figured so but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity you gave me to bring Wilson’s work into the conversation. Thanks!!!
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Just wondering, why isn’t Smarter Balance’s test getting the same treatment? or is it really a better test?
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Same treatment as what?
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I think in this blog we seem to discuss PARCC. I don’t know why we font discuss SmarterBalance tests.
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I know some pundits who still hold loyalty to Linda Darling Hammond, who plays the good-cop role in the accountability hoax. They say they’re trying to talk her over, away from the Common Core. They support her call for the “new accountability”, a broader, more intensified high stakes accountability, woven tightly into individual student performance on technology-driven assessments teachers are forced/empowered to .”create” and submit to.
Mercedes is one of the few who take her on, and when she does, other members of the Network for Public Education generally don’t share the links or build the conversation.
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Still PARCC does seem to get a lot more attention than its fraternal twin, the SBAC. Could it have something to do with the SBAC claim that their test is somehow custom build test items as the student responds. Maybe this “computer adaptive testing” makes the SBAC seem less onerous?
From the SBAC website:
Computer Adaptive Testing
The Smarter Balanced assessment system will capitalize on the precision and efficiency of computer adaptive testing (CAT) for both the mandatory summative assessment and the optional interim assessments.
Based on student responses, the computer program adjusts the difficulty of questions throughout the assessment. For example, a student who answers a question correctly will receive a more challenging item, while an incorrect answer generates an easier question. By adapting to the student as the assessment is taking place, these assessments present an individually tailored set of questions to each student and can quickly identify which skills students have mastered. This approach represents a significant improvement over traditional paper-and-pencil assessments used in many states today, providing more accurate scores for all students across the full range of the achievement continuum
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Perhaps PARCC is “falling apart.”
As many know, Act, Inc. and the College Board were major players in the development of the Common Core. The products and tests they produce –– ACT, PSAT, SAT, AP, college “readiness” tests –– are NOT falling apart. Not even close.
So, even if PARCC dwindles, does it matter?
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Lighten up, Democracy. It matters because it directs our attention to the nature of the beast, which can be defeated, despite its chemically diverse poison breath.
http://www.dungeonsdragonscartoon.com/2009/08/tiamat-dragon.html
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The high school level tests you list have been around for decades and will probably remain as a mainstay for college readiness.
It matters a lot that PARCC and SBAC become an educational disaster, a train wreck on a scale never before imagined. It matters completely that they fail. It matters because the parents, many of whom based their decision where to live on the public schools their kids would/do go to, will NOT tolerate the misbranding of their schools, their children, or their children’s teachers as abject failures based on the tests scores designed to produce artificially high failure rates. New York has been the bell weather for the great parent revolt that will ensue when PARCC and SBAC and all the other wanna be’s do their intended bidding. This matters completely democracy because it will bring the entire CC reform movement to a grinding halt. Yet SATs and ACTs and AP courses will live on.
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NJ is all in. In Newark, they are installing computers left and right.
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Blood money wasted. Just imagine, in fact form a picture in your mind of the musical instruments, the art supplies, the science la equipment, the athletic gear, or the smaller class sizes all that PARCC money could have purchased. And all just show you that students in Newark are struggling academically. May God have mercy on our souls.
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NY,
You’ll love this. They are also getting ready to dump the library.
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They also created the ACT Aspire which is what Alabama’s public schools are now using to test their 3rd-8th graders; started last spring Scores have not been officially released to the public like they were back in the days of AYP but it has been made known that the majority of students are not “proficient”.
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Aspire is a joint ACT-Pearson project where ACT provides the assessment framework and item bank and Pearson provides the technology platform for test taking and administration.
Aspire replaces the old Explore and Plan assessments and extends downward as far as 3rd grade, which is where federal testing mandates kick in. Probably not a coincidence.
A defining feature, agree with it or not, of Aspire is that it tries to extend ACT’s college and career readiness benchmarks down in grade. So, where Explore and Plan could be used to project ACT performance, Aspire “aspires” to do so for students in even lower grades. ACT’s college and career readiness benchmarks are statistically derived from samples involving students at a range of higher education institutions and are correlated with a 50% probability of earning a B or 75% probability of earning a C in a linked course. It is not a system that is likely to show most students at a ready level in a universal administration and the benchmarks vary across subject areas with English being the lowest benchmark and science being the highest.
The most recent ACT report for Alabama’s graduating seniors in the class of 2014 is available at http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2014/states/alabama.html.
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