Thanks to reader Sheila Resseger, who sent this article about the low PARCC scores in Rhode Island.
Here were the results for the kids with the greatest need for support:
Less than 22 percent of black and Latino students scored proficient in English compared to a statewide average of almost 38 percent on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a challenging test rolled out last year amid dismal results.
Less than 9 percent of English language learners reached the state standard, and that number fell to less than 6 percent for special-needs students.
The achievement gaps widened.
The State Commissioner of Education, Ken Wagner (formerly deputy commissioner in New York state), is quoted.
Less than 22 percent of black and Latino students scored proficient in English compared to a statewide average of almost 38 percent on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a challenging test rolled out last year amid dismal results.
Less than 9 percent of English language learners reached the state standard, and that number fell to less than 6 percent for special-needs students.
Related content R.I. educators urge stay the course on standardized testsIn an interview yesterday, State Education Commissioner Ken Wagner said poverty was not to blame for the chronically low scores among urban school districts.
“If you go back 40 years, we’ve always been at a 30- or 40-percent plateau,” he said, referring to the percentage of students reaching proficiency in English and math. “Part of the story is we need to stop changing our minds. We need take a common-sense approach and stick with it for the long haul.”
Rhode Island, unlike Massachusetts, has switched state tests. It has reversed course on whether passing a test should be a high-school graduation requirement. Legislative leadership has undermined the work of education commissioners.
Math scores increased by 5 points this year, with nearly 30 percent of all students meeting the standards. Students improved in every grade level. In English, scores improved by two percentage points, with almost 38-percent reaching proficiency. Students improved in five out of eight grade levels.
Tim Duffy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, said Rhode Island is moving forward but “not fast enough.”
“The anxiety about the PARCC seems to have dissipated,” he said. “But the scores are stagnant at the upper grade levels, which reinforces that the test has to be part of the graduation requirements.”
Wagner moved this year to drop the PARCC as a graduation requirement after widespread criticism that urban students were not adequately prepared to take it, among other concerns.
The PARCC, which was originally adopted by 24 states, is down to seven. Rhode Island is the only state in New England to stick with the test, which has been confounded by technical problems and a huge opt-out movement in states like New York. Massachusetts switched to a hybrid of the PARCC and its own test, the MCAS, this past year.
Wagner denied that the test is too hard, a common criticism. Instead, he said Rhode Island has much work to do to put a rigorous curriculum in every school, ramp up teacher training and redesign the way schools, especially high schools, are structured.
High-school students across Rhode Island performed poorly on the tests. In Providence, every high school but Classical scored in the single digits on the math and English PARCC tests.
But it wasn’t just the urban schools that underperformed. At Burrillville High School, only 17 percent of the students scored proficient on the English test. In North Kingstown and South Kingstown, approximately a third scored proficient and in Westerly, 21 percent did.
Wagner says the tests are not too hard. Surely that can’t be an excuse for the vast majority that “failed.” Can’t blame poverty.
The real problem, he says, is that we need to stick with the PARCC no matter how many kids fail.
Tim Duffy of the state’s school committees wants PARCC to be a graduation requirement (Wagner disagrees). What will Rhode Island do with all those kids who never pass? At this point, it would be a very large majority. Will they drop out? Will they get jobs without a high school diploma? Will they stay in third grade or fourth grade until they pass? Will third grade become a huge parking lot where few students make it to fourth grade?
Please, someone, explain how this would work. And Commissioner Wagner, how many years will it take until most students in Rhode Island “pass” the PARCC test, a feat not accomplished by any other state except Massachusetts? Will students with disabilities stay in school for the rest of their lives?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Job one for all education officials who defend keeping PARCC forever:
Take the test and publish your scores.
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HEAR, HEAR.
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How is it that top education officials are increasingly unmoored from reality? If they fail to pass a majority of kids out of high school because the kids can’t pass an unreasonably hard test, do they think the parents (voters) of the failed kids won’t notice and then be outraged and vote them the heck out of office? I just don’t get what they are defending and what they think they are getting out of it.
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Got to double-down rather than admit that PARCC is a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.
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Even if students DID pass the test, how is it okay to dismiss their poverty? I don’t get that about the reform crowd… how might alleviating poverty “take away from” the -as they define it- success they insist upon?
Just thinking out loud.
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Keeping students in the K-12 corporate charter system for the rest of their lives is similar 6to the private prison industry keeping prisoners beyond the time they were sentences to serve. Everything from the autocrats is about profits.
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Problem 1.
“PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island students showed modest improvement on a state standardized test, but the stubborn achievement gaps between white and students of color only widened.”
Reason for the “gap”: First, administrators and politicians apparently haven’t a clue what is causing the achievement gap. It starts at birth. How many of those students who didn’t score in the proficient range were read to from birth on through the primary grades? How many of those students have been read to by parents/caregivers before they entered school? My children have always and still read nightly to their children and they are all excelling because they have been read to. Those students who haven’t been read to were behind before they began school.
“Children’s first grade reading achievement depends most of all on how much they know about reading before they get to school… The differences in reading potential are shown not to be strongly related to poverty, handedness, dialect, gender, IQ, mental age, or any other such difficult-to-alter circumstances. They are due instead to learning and experience – and specifically to learning and experience with print and print concepts.” Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print, 494pp
“The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. “Commission on Reading in a Nation of Readers”
Secondly, I am wondering if pertinent information is being left out; viz,. How long have the Latino students been in the States? Do their parents speak English?
Thirdly, what can you expect when the corporate world is behind the Standards?
How valid is this complaint of readiness for college- the need of remediation? Are they referring to the number countless students from other countries that must first take courses to become proficient in English before they can matriculate in a university?
Furthermore, Common Core emphasizes the future but we need to learn how to live and interact in the present. Instead of setting as the goal “Readiness for College and Careers” the goal should be preparing for life and learning- how to live in the present.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
Problem 2.
“Wagner denied that the test is too hard, a common criticism. Instead, he said Rhode Island has much work to do to put a rigorous curriculum in every school, ramp up teacher training and redesign the way schools, especially high schools, are structured.”
The real problem, he says, is that we need to stick with the PARCC no matter how many kids fail. “ Ugh!!!!
Response: Progress is measured by the children’s enthusiasm for reading and the amount of reading they do independently- not by test scores. The validity of the aligned standardized testing for all grades has already been addressed on this blog numerous times in the past.
How about examining the Standards themselves?
Educators tell us that the teacher should daily read aloud literature. Focus the discussion on interpretative meaning in lieu of recalling of facts. Analyze the text; relate the text to other texts; connect the text to the their own personal life; dramatize the story- just as students do when they read the text independently or in a guided setting. Discuss interesting vocabulary.
However, for the primary grades Common Core states, “varied and repeated practice leads to rapid recall and automaticity.”
Being able to regurgitate information will be of no use to the students if he/she can’t relate to the information in some way. Developing and relating to the students’ background knowledge is not part of the CC Standards.
Many students come with background rich in knowledge and experiences and can identify with many themes in literature: good and evil; life and death; love and indifference; kindness and malevolence; joy and sorrow; perseverance and surrender; confrontation and compromise; belonging and alienation; honor and dishonor; loyalty, courage, generosity… Isolated drills especially that of phonics will not help them utilize this background to capture their interest in reading.
Discussion is crucial in helping students relate to the story and in turn develop an interest in reading. When discussing the story, they need to respond to such questions as how the story was like their own lives. Discussion should not center around questions that ask students to regurgitate.
Common Core ignores years of research by learning theorists that guided our teaching prior to the Common Core adoption. For centuries philosophers have debated what schools are for. John Dewey believed that the child learns through interaction of his/her background knowledge and the curriculum. Basic for John Dewey was developing critical thinkers by starting with the child in relationship to the curriculum and ending with the child – applying information to the child and to his/her environment. The child comes with experiences and interacts with the environment. Through interaction adjustments are made and learning takes place. Learning isn’t the mind taking a picture and then reproducing it. It’s not a mechanical process e.g. when children memorize – give right answers. Dewey maintained that learning is social. Learning can’t be abstract, passive mode.
The Common Core Standards’ are curriculum centered – they are just interested in facts. But the curriculum and the children are interdependent – two sides of the same coin. If you don’t understand the child and his/her interests, experiences, and abilities the curriculum won’t work. – you can’t make the connection. We can’t just be content centered like the CC mandates. Educators must be interested in the prior knowledge, abilities, and experiences. We can’t educate a child from East Cupcake, Idaho the same way as you teach a child in NYC.
Common Core doesn’t include the imagination as a higher order thinking skill.
Common Core not only imposes a new curriculum but limits the thinking skills to be taught. Common Core ignores the interactive approach: it ignores the need to develop the imagination. Children need to develop the imagination and the skill of visualizing. Children who do not visualize as they read do not comprehend. Children who do not comprehend do not enjoy reading. Einstein stressed the importance of developing the imagination. John Dewey maintained that the imagination is the greatest. “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
Common Core doesn’t include application.
Howard Gardner stated, “Most kids don’t really understand. Children need to be able to apply what they have learned appropriately to a new situation. They need to be able to make use of the knowledge they have acquired. Understanding is not knowing a little bit about many different things. There is a problem with knowing facts but not understanding the framework and the discipline needed to discover or to apply them. You can’t memorize facts to any purpose.”
Vygotsky (1978) maintained that children speak out loud as they think. For them, talk is essential to thought and action until they eventually develop “inner speech”.
CC standards are too often not age appropriate and push the curriculum downward ordering the children to follow inappropriate standard under the delusion that “one-size-fits all.” This will only cause emotional problems. Students and teachers are being subjected to increasingly punitive extrinsic structures: Scores, grades, evaluations, assessments, punishments, discipline, rigidity, standardization, absence of context, divorced from individual experience. All the factors that stimulate and perpetuate intrinsic motivation are disappearing. “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Albert Einstein
Common Core ignores years of research by learning theorists that guided our teaching prior to the Common Core adoption. For centuries philosophers have debated what schools are for. John Dewey believed that the child learns through interaction of his/her background knowledge and the curriculum. Basic for John Dewey was developing critical thinkers by starting with the child in relationship to the curriculum and ending with the child – applying information to the child and to his/her environment. The child comes with experiences and interacts with the environment. Through interaction adjustments are made and learning takes place. Learning isn’t the mind taking a picture and then reproducing it. It’s not a mechanical process e.g. when children memorize – give right answers. Dewey maintained that learning is social. Learning can’t be abstract, passive mode.
Coleman wants us to ‘Eliminate pre-reading activities. Stop focusing instruction on reading strategies… Devote more time to each text by reading and rereading for understanding.’ “ This is asinine!!! Coleman has no background in learning theory nor philosophy of education.
Everything students study should be related to the students in some way but CC doesn’t want background knowledge to enter the picture. CC limits higher order thinking skills of analyzing and comparing to “close reading.”
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.1 “Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.”
CC: Believes that the answers are to be found in the text itself so they concentrate on the text instead of starting with the child and what the child knows.
“Closed reading” negates the years of research stating the importance of utilizing prior knowledge.
Then there is the problem with creative writing and poetry; its neglected. Poetry is always a sure way to succeed. We can always find poems that capture their interest. Concepts, skills, and strategies such as story structure, voc., phonics fluency are taught simultaneously. Students can repeat the poem many times in many ways without being bored. Repeated readings support fluency, and auditory discrimination. Above all, poetry reading develops confidence because the reader is supported by repetition, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration and brevity. Poems are easily duplicated and recite for review at different times. They serve as text to be reread at home, etc. Yet the Standards leaves that up to the teacher’s discretion.
There is a problem with ignoring the students’ needs.
No student should struggle. If they are struggling they are not being instructed on their instructional level!
The philosophy embedded in the CC is a modified version of Behaviorism. For the primary grades CC states, “varied and repeated practice leads to rapid recall and automaticity.” Being able to regurgitate information will be of no use to the students if he/she can’t relate to the information in some way. Research reveals that learning is social; we learn from one another. Learning can’t be abstract, passive mode. We don’t see with our eyes, or hear with our ears; we perceive with our whole being which is based upon our experiences. Dewey wanted to teach students how to think – think beyond just comparing and analyzing. The whole notion of learning is that it is a social activity. Interaction of the students with one another and the students with the teacher is essential to learning. Questions, comments, disagreements, clarification are all part of learning and all help children to construct meaning. When teaching reading, we need to encourage children to question, predict, visualize/imagine, and make connections while reading. The more children can related to the topic the more they can predict and in turn can comprehend/construct meaning. All this is missing with CC’s rote, regurgitation approach, closed reading approach.
CC furthermore, states 50% of the text studied has to be informational.
Love of reading and in turn the love of learning is developed more easily through narratives which children can relate to. Narratives have a problem/challenge to be solved or met which captures and maintains the readers’ attention. Some informational text is important but not 50%. Informational text does not stimulate the imagination, creativity, and sustain interests like the narrative. Too much informational text will take its toll on the student’s attention span. Characters with a problem, searching for a solution can more readily capture readers’ attention and even a desire to read a sequel or at least another story by the same author. Furthermore, narratives provide human experiences . Good writers help the readers to understand: an experience, themselves, other people, themselves in the world in relation to nature, to God, and to themselves.
The CC develops higher order thinking skills through comparing and analyzing concepts only with the text.
Comparing and analyzing of information and knowledge are only two higher order thinking skills of many others. Information and knowledge are on the lower range of Bloom’s taxonomy.
CC states, “Far too often, students who have fallen behind are given only less complex text rather than the instruction they need in the foundational skill in reading as well as vocabulary and other supports they need to read at an appropriate level of complexity.
First of all, students haven’t fallen behind. They were behind before they began formal education. What research are they referring to? What reading program are they referring to? The statement above is meaningless. Assuming the teacher has the needed credentials, she/he determines what the student needs to succeed- not a Standard or administration. Standards are a goal to aim for but teachers work with the abilities the students have.
CC maintains many students are reading at too low a level. CC want to increase text complexity on each grade level with the wrong approach. “Many students just entering grade 2 will need some support as they read texts that are advanced for the grades 2-3 text complexity band. Although such support is educationally necessary and desirable, instruction must move generally toward decreasing scaffolding and increasing independence. … CC further states, “…students (grades 2- 12)should be given text that they may struggle with in order to expand their knowledge. ”Also found in the document “CCSS guidelines on text complexity encourage teachers to engage students in reading at least some texts they are likely to struggle with in terms of fluency and reading comprehension.”
Oh the damage that will be done if teachers adhere to that directive. Our reading problems will escalate and the Reading Gap will just get wider. The text that the teacher gives the students for guided reading in order to develop skills, strategies, and higher order thinking skills must be on their instructional level. Primary children including second and third graders should not struggle: should not be forced to try and read on a frustration level. Students will regress if they are forced to read on a level that is too difficult for them. To expect second and third graders to cope with material that is too difficult is poor teaching and will cause a student to regress and worse can cause a disability say nothing about squelching the desire to read.
Kenneth Goodman, psycholinguist, maintained that “the level of confidence of the reader at any point in time strongly affects the process. If the reader is unsure of the meaning being constructed, finds the text syntactically complex, the concept load heavy, or the concepts strange, then the reader becomes more tentative , more cautious, more careful.” “Like all language learning, developing literacy should be easy and pleasurable. It can be if it isn’t fractionated into arbitrarily sequenced abstract skills.”
Lastly, virtually all specialists condemn the practice of giving standardized tests to children younger than 8 or 9 years old. We are the most over- tested country in the world. Finland gives one standardized test during their academic career.
I have only scratched the surface of CC ‘s and its aligned testing ‘s problems –the real cause of the “learning gap.”
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Tennessee was PARCC bent for leather back around 2013 or so. That summer, I went to a state inservice designed to teach teachers how to make sure students passed the test. The hopeless nature of this quest was illustrated by a girl I had who took the practice test and drew a beautiful young lady in the answer book wondering why they wanted a fish to fly. She might not have understood polynomial functions, but she had a better grasp of educational reality than those whose goals are based on wistful thinking.
If the real PARCC was like the practice, there was a problem: in no way did it differentiate between a kid who was functioning at an average level and a kid who was lost and all alone. As a person who does not like tests at all, I admit my bias, but I say that any test that does not produce a range of scores is suspect. When I make up a test that produces a few 90s and a bunch of zeroes, I know I have created a poor test. This is exactly what we saw with the practice tests.
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Nonsense. Someone needs to sit with some kids and go over the questions and see why they answer the wrong way. Didn’t they pre-test items? These instruments produce panics, alarms ad mislead us all at the same time.
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They can’t – the tests are super-secret so the testing companies can keep recycling the questions each year. It would be too hard for testing companies to use some of the millions they earn from these tests to come up with a new test each year.
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“Nonsense. Someone needs to sit with some kids and go over the questions and see why they answer the wrong way. Didn’t they pre-test items? ”
Gotta turn this one around on you Deb. Nonsense is giving any time whatsoever to the completely invalid process, i.e., educational malpractices, that is the standards and testing regime.
It’s one thing for a teacher to go over a teacher made assessment with the student as part of the teaching and learning process but any time spent on the standards and testing malpractices is just that an educational malpractice.
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A comment on test gaps for ELL’s.
This is a gap that cannot be closed. Once kids gain enough proficiency in English, they are no longer classified as English Language Learners. (How that proficiency is determined is a different question.) The group identified as ELL’s is ALWAYS a group of students that do not read, write, speak or listen well enough to “achieve” success on a test normed for native English speakers.
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Quit being so logical Christine!!!
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Directive #1
Ignore poverty
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/as-shelter-population-skyrockets-cuomo-holds-back-promised-housing-9033122
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Directive #2
Ignore poverty
https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2016/08/27/why-cuomo-wants-you-to-pay-unions-to-build-luxury-housing/amp/?client=safari
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Ad infinitum!
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