New Jersey is Dropping PARCC Tests!

January 14, 2018 //

The Newly elected Democratic Governor of New Jersey announced that the state is dropping out of the Common Core aligned PARCC Tests.

Gov-elect Murphy: New Jersey will stop using PARCC tests

Categories Education Reform

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Bob Shepherd says:

January 14, 2018 at 8:51 pm

The insane thing is that it has taken them this long. And P.A.R.C.C. spelled backward is. . . ?

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- Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:
  
  January 14, 2018 at 8:53 pm
  
  P.A.R.C.C. … Good one, Bob.
  
  We know it’s about $$$$$ for the FEW, not education.
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 14, 2018 at 9:05 pm
    
    That’s an oldie, Yvonne. I think it might have been Dwayne Swacker who first used it on this blog.
    
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 1:32 am
    
    And thanks, Yvonne! For your comments, always!
    
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- KrazyTA says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 12:25 am
  
  Bob Shepherd: you have just provided the answer to the question—
  
  If you want CCRAP afterwards, what do you do administer and mandate beforehand?
  
  PARCC.
  
  Thank you for clearing that up.
  
  😎
  
  P.S. The above is obvious when you take into consideration, as someone once said, that plotting one’s course forward in education by relying on the misleading results of high-stakes standardized tests is like driving on the expressway by looking in the rearview mirror.
  
  🤪
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 1:31 am
    
    What a treasure you are, KrazyTA. Your comments are always so well written and interesting! Thank you.
    
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Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

January 14, 2018 at 8:57 pm

Let’s hope NJ doesn’t come up with a replacement for PARCC.

PARCC: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/07/a-16-year-old-takes-the-new-parcc-exam-heres-her-disturbing-report/?utm_term=.24b9acb2f222

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- tutucker says:
  
  January 14, 2018 at 9:17 pm
  
  They will. I don’t see this as good news. The last paragraph says it all.
  Shorter and more tests…computers win…not students.
  
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  - Danielle Schwartz says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 10:20 am
    
    YES. Sadly, this is the neoliberal approach. “During his campaign, Murphy said shorter tests should be developed with teacher input that would provide real-time feedback to teachers and students.” The general public hears the good news, and misses the coded news. “Real-time feedback” means online testing, which may even be stealthily hidden in online programs. Kids can be tested constantly without their or their parent’s knowledge. Our children continue to be guinea pigs.
    
    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/aea59a/could-ai-replace-student-testing
    
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moeone2015 says:

January 14, 2018 at 10:03 pm

It is really too bad the rest of the states, including New Mexico, don’t have the intestinal fortitude to dump the PARCC.

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- dianeravitch says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 2:32 am
  
  At the rate PARCC is going, it will be down to only one or two states. A slow and certain collapse
  
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  - Lisa M says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 9:18 am
    
    MD will keep it eternally. Pearson owns Montgomery County public schools and Mr. Petrilli will keep that alliance going….along with Finn who sits on MSDE. Can’t say many of the parents are happy with this.
    
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  - tutucker says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 10:57 am
    
    Common core is not going away. Essa has made sure of that. Standards based learning is evident everywhere.
    Shorter online testing that follows common core will be the new craze.
    This is not a celebration but a step towards more testing, more often with more at stake.
    
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j135cooper says:

January 14, 2018 at 10:33 pm

CA School Board, Michael Kirst et al, just approved a $100 Million to keep the SBAC going.
The ETS and others who profit from these ridiculous tests have created their own lobby to keep the tests going.
Although many parents opt out, it’s not enough.

When CA Governor Brown leaves next year the budget is going to collapse. He’s warned about it for the last few years. Last week he sent a message who wins the Nov. 2018 election. “Good luck baby!”

Well maybe when our state goes broke the legislators will finally end to stop spending on this insane test.
Can we sue a Gov. for misuse of state funds if he’s out of office? What a great idea.

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Therlo says:

January 14, 2018 at 11:16 pm

I live in NJ. I saw a commercial just yesterday about the common core and how great it is. Unbelievable.

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 12:11 am
  
  Idiots. The Common Core for ELA reminds me of what a group of small-town businessmen would come up with if they sat around and brainstormed a list of “things to learn in English class” based on what they vaguely remembered from back then. It’s moronic. I think of this as a kind of intelligence and experience test for English teachers. If they think the CC$$ in ELA is acceptable, they basically haven’t a clue. It’s as though someone handed David Coleman an 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and asked him to write new standards for the medical professional based on it.
  
  Teaching Metaphor (with Comments on Developing Curricula in the Age of the Thought Police)
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 2:31 am
  
  Someone must be making a last ditch effort to save the Common Core from its inevitable fate. Gournish helfen (a Yiddish expression meaning it won’t help).
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 2:46 am
    
    Lol. Wonderful!
    
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  - joe prichard says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 9:18 am
    
    Is there any history of arne duncan supporting or fighting the test?
    
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  - joe prichard says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 9:28 am
    
    History…ben weider wrote about duncan and later in the story, december 10, 2015, said that Obama was about to sign a comprehensive bill which would undo a lot of what Duncan (with support of Gates) had done. Too much for me to sort out, other than this is something that every democrat running for office should be emphasizingl……..duncan and gates were a huge mistake.
    
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  - Some DAM Poet says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 10:15 am
    
    Unfortunately, the Trojan horse did not stop at the Gates.
    
    “The Maestro” (aka” A brief history of Reform under Democrats”)
    
    Chetty picked his VAMdolin
    At Nobel-chasing speed
    Duncan played the basket rim
    And Rhee, she played the rheed
    
    Coleman played his Core-o-net
    Moskowitz, the lyre
    Billy Gates played tête-à-tête
    With Duncan and with higher
    
    Sanders beat his cattle drum
    Devalue Added Model
    Pseudo-science weighted sum
    Mathturbated twaddle
    
    John King played the slide VAMbone
    But Maestro was Obama
    Who hired the band and set the tone
    For corporatic drama
    
    (William Sanders, an economist, applied his
    “cattle growth model” to students to create
    teacher VAM.)
    
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  - jscheidell says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 3:48 pm
    
    Diane,
    
    Isn’t Gates dumping more money into this project
    
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  - dianeravitch says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 11:41 pm
    
    Yes
    
    Gates often fails but seldom admits failure
    
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Bob Shepherd says:

January 15, 2018 at 12:13 am

Now if the NJ education braintrust could just figure out that they need to dump the whole standards-and-testing model, which predictably has turned our English classes into meaningless, mindless test prep and has robbed an entire generation of proper instruction in English.

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- Abigail Shure says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 12:15 am
  
  No chance of that Bob.
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 12:22 am
    
    For the time being, yes. A tragedy, that.
    
    The Coring of the Six Hundred (with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
    
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Bob Shepherd says:

January 15, 2018 at 12:19 am

The Education Deformers are fond of saying that you get what you measure. Oh, boy. Yes. After decades of the CC$$ in ELA, we’ve gotten idiocy. The standards-and-testing regime has basically destroyed the field of K-12 English instruction.

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- KrazyTA says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 12:37 am
  
  Bob Shepherd: in the Ken Burns VIETNAM film series someone was quoted [as per the numerical “measurements” used to gauge success on the battlefield] somewhat as follows—
  
  “When you can’t measure what you value, you make valuable what you can measure.”
  
  Even when what you measure is not just predictably misleading and unhelpful but, quite literally, plays a significant role in ensuring failure.
  
  Thank you for your comments in this thread.
  
  😎
  
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  - Some DAM Poet says:
    
    January 15, 2018 at 9:25 am
    
    In the case of Vietnam, it was not that they could not gauge success in any other way, it was that every way other than a Vietnamese dead body count showed that America was not succeeding.
    
    In other words, the “measure” was the only way of perpetuating the Big Lie ( McNamara, Goebels, six of one, a half dozen of the other)
    
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- ciedie aech says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 1:47 pm
  
  We’ve gotten measurable idiocy — and measurable segregation.
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 16, 2018 at 12:11 am
    
    Well said! Yes.
    
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Joe says:

January 15, 2018 at 12:30 am

Murphy also appointed Dr. Lamont Repollet, the schools superintendent in Asbury Park, to be education commissioner. Hopefully, Repollet is not a charter school stooge.

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Bob Shepherd says:

January 15, 2018 at 1:35 am

So, are these people slow learners, or is another testing organization now paying more graft?

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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 1:36 am
  
  Gee. Did I say graft. Or did I say lucrative revolving door consultancies
  
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Some DAM Poet says:

January 15, 2018 at 8:45 am

“Don’t Celebrate Yet”

The test was dropped
But Core was not
The latter flopped
So name was shot

But Cores remain
With other name
So big balloon
Is oversoon

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dezignzbydebverizonnet says:

January 15, 2018 at 9:01 am

Don’t get your hopes up just yet. Like all the other states that “dumped” PARCC……they went with SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium aks American Institutes for Research and/or American Institutes for Research like Florida and Delaware. All’s they did was swap one CRAP test for another CRAP test. AIR has become extremely greedy and wants PARCC out so they can control all the testing. AIR is also tied to Questar, DRC, MI and ETS. So don’t celebrate until you know for sure you will NOT be getting any of those testing companies. Good luck NJ!

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Chiara says:

January 15, 2018 at 9:40 am

I’m not as opposed to the Common Core or Common Core tests as much as many of you are, but I AM glad the good people of New Jersey voted for a change in direction from Christie and their new governor is responsive to that.

Next we’ll have to look at the amount of testing contained within “personalized learning” platforms. My son is using a personalized learning program in high school (just science) and he’s been showing me what he’s doing- they are spending 1/4 to 1/3 of their time taking online tests. They read a short passage, take a test, watch a video, take a test. He has science 5 days for about 45 minutes a session. They are easily testing for 25% of that time, based on what he’s shown me at home.

Once parents figure this out there will be pushback to it. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more coverage of what to me is the central feature of these systems – a LOT of testing.

THere isn’t less testing in ed reform- there’s more. They just changed the delivery system, label and marketing.

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Chiara says:

January 15, 2018 at 9:53 am

Democrats at the state level are becoming much more pro-public education than Democrats at the national level.

One of the Democratic candidates for governor in MI is running on what can only be called a pro-public school platform.

It’s nice to see someone affirmatively and passionately committed to public education rather than the collection of charter/voucher lobbyists and easily captured and co-opted “agnostics” we have seen in recent years.

I think there’s an untapped constituency for pro-public school politicians. We’re the vast majority of families at all income levels. Democrats at the state level seem to agree since they’re doing a 180 from the Bush/Obama approach.

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tutucker says:

January 15, 2018 at 11:00 am

Please listen!!!! We are in bigger trouble as this test will be replaced with more tests, more often and with higher stakes.
Common core is NOT going away. Essa and the push for even more technology assessment and instruction has made standards even more important.
Common core is not going away!!!

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- Some DAM Poet says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 11:38 am
  
  “CCRAP by another name”
  
  The name’s been changed
  To shield the crooks
  The games arranged
  To cook the books
  
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  - Bob Shepherd says:
    
    January 16, 2018 at 12:13 am
    
    LOL. Awesome. Yes.
    
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Roy Turrentine says:

January 15, 2018 at 11:52 am

In my pessimism, I am beginning to wonder if the standards movement is the problem. I say pessimism because I do not see any lessening of the lists that are extruded from bureaucratic entities that are always being handed down from above. Sometimes these things come from universities with pipelines to government. Sometimes theyncome from intellectual property business with pipelines to government. Some would say that government is the problem. I say the problem is bad business and bad government. The standards movement, and it’s inevitable companion, testing,

Administors like testing when they can show something good for PR. Teachers who teach highly motivated students like testing because these students look good on test day. Even students who do well on tests like them, despite their protests to the contrary, for they mean extra opportunities to go with their already bulging wallets. Politicians like testing because there is always a positive spin. So what is not to like?

The primary thing to distrust is that no matter what your test scores look like when you are 17, you will be as dysfunctional as the field of candidates if you do not spend your life in intellectual improvement. I used to sharpen my pocket knife so that it would shave you. When I quit that, it’s edge was gone in a week or two. Such it is with learning. No test will ever predict whether a person will continue to learn. My grades won’t, nor will the ACT or SAT. A degree from a fine institution may stimulate some students to learn for life, but if those graduates do not continue their intellectual development, they will be overtaken by those who attended AOSU (Any Old State U).

We need to admit that all this is for naught so we can focus on reforms that will develop personal relationships in education. From these relationships, we can gain from the gift culture of traditional societies. We value what we get for free in a personal relationship. That is why people so often refer to teachers who were important to them. They got a gift. The fewer the number of students for our teachers, the more there will be a teaching corp that is in a position to do this gift aspect of cultural acquisition.

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- tutucker says:
  
  January 15, 2018 at 2:16 pm
  
  Yes!!! The standards movement is the problem!!!!
  
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- Bob Shepherd says:
  
  January 16, 2018 at 12:15 am
  
  Yes. Indeed. The standards movement is the problem. Have a look at this analysis of just one Common Core State Standard [sic] in ELA. The same could be done with almost all of them:
  
  Teaching Metaphor (with Comments on Developing Curricula in the Age of the Thought Police)
  
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