I have earlier reported studies showing that students post higher scores when they take tests with pencil and paper, rather than on computers. Some children do not have keyboard skills, some get confused by scrolling up and down in search of the right text. Yet state officials demand that students take tests online. This is especially pernicious for the youngest children, who are least likely to have the computer skills needed for the testing. This parents asks why.
Open Letter to
Kimberley Harrington,
Acting Commissioner of Education
State of New Jersey
March 10, 2017
Dear Ms. Harrington,
You are making nearly all third graders in the state of New Jersey take the PARCC test on a computer knowing scores would measure more accurately, and very likely be substantially higher if the test were administered with pencil and paper. Many reputable articles in professional publications substantiate this. My son is in third grade. I am both a concerned father and an educator. Why would you not want New Jersey students to achieve the highest scores possible? PARCC assessment tests the knowledge students acquire from their teacher, not adeptness using a computer – or am I missing something? Your insistence the PARCC be administered on a computer not only likely negatively impacts scores, but also potentially reflects negatively on a teacher’s evaluation as 30% is based on PARCC scores.
I would like to understand more about your logic behind this mandate. Schools unfortunately have cast aside handwriting instruction and other important developmental skills to make room for PARCC. Why then insist the PARCC be administered on computer?
Many parents across New Jersey are anxious to hear your detailed reasoning on this matter.
David Di Gregorio
Father, Englewood Cliffs
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another point: Children from families with higher income — upper-middle class & above — are more likely to have greater, or any, access to computers at home, maybe even their own computers, & are therefore likely to outperform significantly children from poor families who don’t have such access. That skews the outcome with an element that has nothing to do with the skills purportedly being tested, invalidating the results as an assessment of those skills.
Yes, exactly.
Parents are correct in asking for detailed reasoning on the use of computers in their schools, especially for high stakes tests, but also for any use. Districts have to sign student privacy agreements with outside contractors who provide tests and other programs for data-gathering via computers. Savvy parents should ask to see these documents and pay attention to who is responsible for “privacy” of student data.
Since it has been proven that all students do better on a pen and paper exam than one on a computer, parents should opt their children out of unfair testing. Since schools and families vary greatly in their access to technology, these tests are totally unfair anyway. Parents and students waste time and gain nothing from subjecting young people to endless bubble tests. The tests benefit the testing companies that sell students’ data. There is no benefit to feeding the big data monster.
Why is NJ requiring third grade students to take the PARCC test
on a computer?Fixed.
Why is NJ requiring
third gradestudents to take the PARCC test?Fixed better
Both of your comments are spot on, Poet.
Why, indeed?
They’re requiring 3rd graders to test online because it’s cheaper and easier for testing companies.
Your mistake is thinking any part of the standardized testing process has anything whatever to do with children.
YES. And technically, offering tests “online” continues the cultural segregation/incarceration game. The digital divide is real and proven; those with money have excessive technology in their homes and those without money struggle to pay the rent and buy food. Kids who whiz through technological assignments get the credits, grades and applause — kids who struggle with technology are labeled, maligned and too often pushed into our ever more efficient school-to-prison pipeline.
I haven’t heard a word on the Common Core in Ohio since the tests went in.
One of the objections to Common Core was that it was reductive- it would become “all about the test”. The people who said that were right.
Front and center- Peggy Lehner, Ohio Senate Education Committee Chair, reportedly sister of the president of one of the Gates’ ed. organizations.
At one of my former schools, the principal was teaching 6th graders typing… yes they had a class just for typing and it was solely because of the PARCC Test. One can only imagine how this negatively impacts 3rd graders who do not have typing lessons and are not likely to have computers at home!
But in reality, it really is not about wanting the students to do better. All the companies involved in buying an maintaining those computers and software for the tests WANT THEIR PROFIT… and besides… poor performance will “just prove” what a “failure” the public school system is so privatizers can take over! 😦
The answer for on-line testing is obvious. There is no paper trail where a copy of the test could be leaked to the media revealing how flawed the test is. There are no printing costs. There are no shipping costs. No need to buy paper.
And that all means more profits.
The AZMERIT test is also administered to students in grades 3-8 on computer. There have been perforce issues, especially for younger students and ELLs, given their limited instruction, preparation and access for testing on computers. I personally hold little stock in the test results.
Yet, they still will not get the results of the BS test until November. Great technology.
I’m sure as soon as he said he was an educator, Ms.Harrington stopped reading. We can’t even get those in our own profession to listen.
Diane, thank you for posting.
While you may be at home – help the 3rd graders and especially in high schoolers
From Save Our Schools
This Thursday, March 16th, the entire NJ Assembly will vote on Assembly Concurrent Resolution 215, which would overturn PARCC as a graduation requirement. Thanks to your calls and nearly 6,000 emails, this concurrent resolution was overwhelmingly approved by the Assembly Education Committee on February 13th. If the full Assembly approves it, the resolution moves to the New Jersey Senate for a vote.
THIS PROCESS DOES NOT REQUIRE GOVERNOR CHRISTIE’S SIGNATURE!
If a simple majority of the NJ Assembly and NJ Senate support Assembly Concurrent Resolution 215 and its companion Senate Concurrent Resolution 132, the current PARCC graduation requirements would be struck down.
The Gates Foundation gave one of the two owners of copyrighted Common Core, $15.4 mil. in 2016. About the same time, a Fellow of the Aspen Pahara Institute, became President of PARCC. (Pahara is funded by Gates.). A quote
from a web page posted at the Aspen Institute Education and Society Program follows, “States can choose SBAC or PARCC” testing, for Common Core.
Gates funds the Senior CONGRESSIONAL (my caps) Education Staff Network, which is part of Aspen, where David Koch is a board member.
Linking standards/curriculum/testing/data analytics provides a big profit opportunity for the tech industry. Bill Gates, Pearson, Mark Zuckerberg,…are investors in the largest seller of for-profit schools-in-a-box.
Is the answer to the question, posed in the post, that the richest 0.1% want to further concentrate their wealth, at the expense of the middle class? Gates, despite claims of giving away his fortune, never falls one rung on the richest men lists. And, the school-privatizing Walton’s, have wealth equivalent to 40% of Americans combined.
Linda,
There is another program that funds Congressional staff members for the education committees. It is run by TFA and funded by billionaire Arthur Rock of California. With a TFA intern on the staff, TFA’s interests are protected. They protect charter funding too.
Thanks for the info.
Gates’ Congressional Staff Network creates “a safe space”, which I presume means they meet in the isolation chamber of the richest 0.1%, away from democracy.
Is there a way to get the names of the Congressional staff members in Gates and Rock-funded “networks”?