One more view of the report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute on the “next generation assessments,” this one from the indispensable Mercedes Schneider.
Mercedes, as you would expect, questions the independence of TBF. She reprints a statement from ACT, which did not agree that their tests were less valuable that the Common Core tests funded by the federal government.
And she includes a statement by Louise Law, director of elementary education for a middle-income district in western Massachusetts, who believes that the test complexity of PARCC makes it an inappropriate and flawed instrument.
In her commentary, Law writes:
The reading passages found in PARCC are far beyond grade levels of the students being tested, and it is difficult to believe that the evaluators were unaware of that fact. The reading difficulty level of any text depends on such qualitative variables as sequencing, language complexity, topic and theme and quantitative factors such as word and sentence length. Teachers know this principle — and so do the writers and editors who choose the reading passages and compose the questions for all these tests. A variety of well established research-based formulas readily available online can be used to determine the readability level of a given text. By any number of such formulas, several reading passages in the 2015 PARCC test are beyond the grade level being tested, some by several years.
She analyzes both the reading and math portion of the PARCC and concludes:
Passages that students cannot read are not a useful educational tool. Tests designed this way create anxiety for children as young as eight years old and frustrate teachers. Meanwhile, as students, teachers and schools are insidiously and incorrectly identified as “failing,” publishers will reap tremendous profits selling remedial and test prep materials to school districts eager to help their students score satisfactorily. At the same time, as the public is convinced of the false narrative that our public schools are failing, the proliferation of for-profit businesses that manage charter schools will continue, and the march to privatization of our schools will accelerate.
Assessments based on PARCC should be suspended until the questions have been more carefully vetted and the tests have been validated by education professionals who are not even remotely affiliated with organizations funded by those promoting a particular agenda. Until that time, we are serving the interests of corporate profit rather than of students’ academic and emotional growth, and we are wasting our time with an exercise that undermines teaching and learning.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Of course, the Common Core came with its own readability formula from Metametrics, the Lexile®, and also a verbatim clause on the use of the Common Core. The Lexile® is the subject of great takedowns on many websites. If followed, it leads to absurd classifications of readability. I like the absurdities at Susan Ohanian’s blog.
I also think there is insufficient attention to the issues in navigating the graphic interfaces in online tests. There is already evidence that some students do better on pencil and paper tests.
“Assessments based on PARCC should be suspended until the questions have been more carefully vetted and the tests have been validated by education professionals who are not even remotely affiliated with organizations funded by those promoting a particular agenda.”
If want you want test items accurately vetted for grade level reliability, validity, and instructional sensitivity – don’t hold your breath. You would have a better chance of capturing a paisley unicorn on an hunting expedition to to Planet X.
I tried to write about this exact insanity (seeking to capture a paisley unicorn!) in my book. Over more than a decade of being forced to administer test after test and then suffer the consequences attached to test scores, I have never seen anyone held to account for the reliability of tests. Outside of confusing, ambiguous questions and outright typos, tests made by national, state or local test-makers are often both culturally and racially slanted — and yet the game goes on. ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/coloring-outside-the-lines
One of the best arguments for grade span testing is the impossible task faced by grade 3 to 8 ELA test writers. That is, selecting passages and writing items that can accurately discriminate between grade levels where children are developmentally all over the map. Any attempt to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of teachers, the quality of reading instruction, or the students themselves is a fool’s errand. Include “grade level” writing skills and the problem is infinitely more impossible.
Note: Any task that is more impossible than the simply impossible, enters the realm of just plain stupid.
Perfectly said!