MCAP pulling students from their classes

[Anonymous]

They used to give national tears like CAT and the IOWA assessment when I was younger.

[Anonymous]

What I don't understand is why these tests have to take so long. Can't someone make more abbreviated versions? The kids are all behind in their learning right now and it's just making it worse. What are we learning from the tests anyway? As far as I know at our school which had about 50-60 % fails it has changed nothing and it seems to have changed nothing that MCPS does.

[Anonymous]

What I don’t understand is why folks are complaining about this on the McPS forum instead of the state representatives, the state BOE, or the federal department of education. MCPS is not a monster for following state and federal regulations.

Further PARCC was meant to be the new national test for all states, but because lots of folks balked, now we have a mid ash of test across states and the country. Many of which are just the PARCC exam with a new name and some questions missing.

[Anonymous]

Everyone mad should blame George bush and his no child left behind act, which sounded like a good idea if you only heard the summary, but which has been pretty awful for public education, including imposing these dumb tests that have no use and no one wants to take.

They are pretty useless but at least not as bad as the versions they were using a few years ago. Someone has made a bunch of money off writing, administering and grading these tests—it’s a sop to private industry. Basically whenever a politician criticizes public schools and demands oversight, I now assume there is some private company waiting in the wings to bill for their time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't opt out?

I think some of these are replacing fianls and will count as 20% of your grade.

MCPS has no finals and standardized testing is separate from grades. Your child can decline to take standardized testing. No impact on grades. There might be complications with the high school testing required for graduation. My senior's got waived when he was in the Virtual Academy of MCPS and missed some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't opt out?

I think some of these are replacing fianls and will count as 20% of your grade.

MCPS has no finals and standardized testing is separate from grades. Your child can decline to take standardized testing. No impact on grades. There might be complications with the high school testing required for graduation. My senior's got waived when he was in the Virtual Academy of MCPS and missed some.

Don’t get use to this, because soon in HS they count for up to 20% of the final grade. It’s part of the new Blueprint requirements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS has 3 MAPs per year, each in 2 subjects, plus MCAP (subjects vary by grade), plus all the curricular class tests, plus AP/IB for high school. It's a bit much.

With MCAP especially, it's non-adaptive per student and non-adaptive to the order of curriculum in classes, and the results do nothing to help teachers customize curriculum to the students, and the new test wasn't fully tested (ha!) on a sample population before being dumped on all students.

But they don't have finals, at least!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't opt out?

I think some of these are replacing fianls and will count as 20% of your grade.

MCPS has no finals and standardized testing is separate from grades. Your child can decline to take standardized testing. No impact on grades. There might be complications with the high school testing required for graduation. My senior's got waived when he was in the Virtual Academy of MCPS and missed some.

Don’t get use to this, because soon in HS they count for up to 20% of the final grade. It’s part of the new Blueprint requirements.

How the heck is that going to work if scores are delayed by 6 months to a year?