There is an axiom in the field of educational testing that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed. The PARCC test of Common Core was intended to measure the Common Core standards. It was not intended to be a graduation exam. Yet tat is what New Jersey plans to do. If it follows through, large numbers of students will fail to graduate.
Parents plan to demonstrate tomorrow against this bad idea:
NEW JERSEY PARENTS, STUDENTS SPEAK OUT AGAINST HARMFUL TESTING POLICIES
Parents and students to rally in Trenton to demand that their voices are heard!
Dissatisfied with how high stakes standardized testing is eclipsing their children’s education, parents all over New Jersey are insisting upon their right to make decisions that impact their child’s education by demanding that their voices be heard and included in educational decision making practices.
Recent changes to New Jersey’s high school graduation requirements without the revision of legal statute or regulatory change are characteristic of the exclusionary practice we have seen from the New Jersey Department of Education in recent years. The intentional silencing of parents, students, and teachers in this state is proving to be detrimental towards the quality education that New Jersey has previously been known for.
Recently, the Education Law Center of New Jersey presented the facts to the Joint Committee on Public Schools surrounding this issue. The change of the high school graduation requirements has endangered the potential graduation of thousands of students. Districts are expending financial and personnel resources to assist these students. But the fact is that these issues are caused by the Department of Education’s direct refusal to recognize that the PARCC test has been a mistake that is proving to be a financial burden to our schools.
Highland Park Board of Education President Darcie Cimarusti said, “I will be there to represent the Highland Park Board of Education, the first board in the state to adopt a resolution urging the NJDOE to provide multiple pathways to a high school diploma, including alternatives not based on standardized tests. Our board also urged the state to respect the right of parents to make decisions about the assessment alternatives that are most appropriate for their children.”
Parent Tova Felder states “The State Department of Education has not been acting in the best interests of our children. They have pushed a test on us that has never been proven to be valid or reliable, has cost our districts millions of dollars, comes with seemingly endless amounts of data collection, takes an extraordinary amount of time to prepare for and take, and whose results indicate that approximately half of our students are not meeting standards for proficiency. Then they say, “Hey, let’s make this a requirement for graduating!” It’s almost like they want our children to fail. In fact, it feels an awful lot like that.”
On Wednesday, April 6th, parents and concerned citizens will be rallying in front of the State Board of Education at 9:30 am before the public session. After the rally, everyone will be attending the meeting to once again demand that their voices be heard.
Contact: Liz Mulholland, 908-232-6666
Bill Michaelson, 646-506-9922
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where would we be without the “little people”? Where, without the non-millionaires that are only concerned with the proper education of their communities children would we be?
In New Jersey, Darcie Cimarusti (Mother Crusader)was one of the first along with Mark Weber (Jersey Jazzman) and Dr. Baker to keep us informed of the harmful effects and lies that the corporate reformers where spewing.
In the Nation, we have the BATs and of course Diane!
I hate to think where Public education would be without these caring people standing in the way of the reform steamrollers!
Keep up the fight for the sake of the children and Democracy itself!
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What evidence shows that a “large number of students will fail to graduate” if PARCC is left as a graduation requirement? There are still many ways to graduate.
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Adam, between 60-70% of students will fail PARCC because its cut score is aligned with NAEP proficient, an unreasonable pass mark.
If PARCC is a grad requirement, how can students graduate if they fail PARCC?
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I hope the whole misuse of testing causes a parents’ revolt, backfires on the governor, and the stubborn ignorance of Christie is in plain sight to the majority of New Jersey voters.
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ELC is putting that number around 50k students at risk of not graduating. It’s ugly in NJ.
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They might have failed PARCC, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they haven’t passed any other standard testing required for graduation. They can still graduate if they pass some other test, such as the SAT or ACT.
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Adam, neither the SAT or ACT were designed as high school graduation tests. They are college admission tests. And nearly 900 colleges no longer require them.
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NAEP BASIC score description for reading. This would be insufficient to earn a passing grade for graduation.
Twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to identify elements of meaning and form and relate them to the overall meaning of the text. They should be able to make inferences, develop interpretations, make connections between texts, and draw conclusions; and they should be able to provide some support for each. They should be able to interpret the meaning of a word as it is used in the text.
When reading literary texts such as fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry, twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to describe essential literary elements such as character, narration, setting, and theme; provide examples to illustrate how an author uses a story element for a specific effect; and provide interpretations of figurative language.
When reading informational texts such as exposition, argumentation, and documents, twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to identify the organization of a text, make connections between ideas in two different texts, locate relevant information in a document, and provide some explanation for why the information is included.
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It doesn’t matter that colleges don’t require them. The point I’m trying to make is that there isn’t a basis for a “large number of students [failing] to graduate”- there is only one for a large number failing to pass the PARCC.
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Adam, PARCC is a graduation REQUIREMENT
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Perhaps I am uninformed. In my district, at least, there are multiple ways for to meet the testing requirement. The PARCC is only one of these ways. Is this not true for other districts?
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If it’s like Massachusetts then you do not get a high school diploma. It’s as simple (horrible) as that. Even if you pass every other grade requirement but fail the MCAS, one does not get a diploma they receive a certificate of attendance or something like that. So saying there are other ways to graduate is untrue….
My daughter had the privilege of taking MCAS and PARCC this week….you’re all jealous.
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“The PARCC test of Common Core was intended to measure the Common Core standards.”
Ay ay ay ay ay, said in an old retired Spanish teacher’s exasperated voice.
And I “intended” to sell my ocean front white sand beach property over at Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri. My intentions does not make my attempts to sell “my” ocean front white sand beach property any less ludicrous and risible, much less any more sane. Nor are the intentions and attempts by the supporters of educational standards and standardized testing (CCSS/PARCC) to legitimate their malpractices any less insane, ludicrous and risible.
We have known at least since 1997 the myriad errors, falsehoods and psychometric fudges of the standards and standardized testing regime render those malpractices COMPLETELY INVALID. Noel Wilson, in his never refuted nor rebutted seminal treatise, has proven that COMPLETE INVALIDITY of those malpractices. Any and everyone involved in education should read and comprehend his “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.
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 words 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.
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http://www.nj.com/education/2016/04/nj_hopes_to_convert_teachers_into_parcc_believers.html
how many states are using this test – are even 7 left?
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In the 2015-16 school year, 11 partners are participating in the PARCC assessment system. These include 7 fully-participating states: Colorado, , Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island, plus the District of Columbia .
This is down from the initial commitment in 2010 by 24 states plus DC.
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Massachusetts will be soon switching to a MCAS-PARCC hybrid exam.
The good news is that this will be a sterile hybrid and will be incapable of producing any offspring.
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Has any reporter asked Christie why his children,
Patrick (b. 2000) and Bridget (b. 2003)
are NOT taking the PARCC exams?
Maybe this interchange with Gail explains why:
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZQUrvYy9wI
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