PARCC... is this test still relevant at all???

[Anonymous]

+100

[Anonymous]

I mean…it was never relevant or useful. Nor did it tell anyone anything they didn’t already know. Same as the Iowa test and CT mastery tests I took when I was a kid. Serves no purpose other than to enrich testing companies and force the schools to teach whatever is on the exam and how to take it instead of working on useful material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You may want to check out the 6 page thread on this very topic: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1032577.page

And, it's relevant because DC doesn't have another test ready to go at the moment and federal law mandates accountability testing of some kind.

This. Kids need some type of standardized test to see how they are doing in general and compared to peers. DC happens to pick PARCC which is not the best

No one is using PARCC. No one.

Ok but you can still use PARCC to compare the kids in DC and how your kid is doing compared to his peers at his school and other schools. That is helpful information.

This can be done with the MAP /nwea assessments.

Why do you think MAP is better? Because it's shorter? (That's a real reason and I am asking genuinely.)

I understand parents wanting a different test, if they really feel a different test would be better aligned with assessing student progress, targeting intervention, etc. But just complaining that DC is testing this year is silly. They have to. Like every other state.

[Anonymous]

It’s is correct that no other states use PARCC but only a half-truth. Many states (including MD) use the same vendor and most of the tests recycle or use very similar prompts. So, there is way more comparable data now than before the Common Core assessments were developed (and all of it is loads better than the early NCLB assessments).

This is all a federal mandate. Trust that no school admin wants to give the federal assessments. It doesn’t matter how good the test is- they are generally useless for instruction. They always have been. (I have been administering them since my first year of teaching in 2004).

[Anonymous]

Have we shown by now that testing isn't helping to educate? It's not raising the almighty test scores in a meaningful way that an extra few dozen hours of instruction and $$$ reassigned wouldn't.

[Anonymous]

Yes, we’ve shown it, but gimmicky and wasteful top-down testing remains because our society isn’t willing to invest in more constructive inputs to raise standards and increase outputs. I would opt out of PARRC for my own children if the test was better and wasn’t a corporate confection. There’s a middle ground on testing that the District isn’t bothering to seek. After punitive school closures that really messed up my 7 year old, I’m no longer willing to play along with a miserable test. Yet I’m about the only parent in my school who’s opting out (according to admins). As long as almost all the parents in the system tolerate the PARCC momentum for change cannot build.

[Anonymous]

Yawn.

It’s just a test.

Your kids will survive.

[Anonymous]

If you don't mind PARCC, go for it. Survive away.

If you do mind it, please spare us your grumbling on DCUM if you let your kids take it.

[Anonymous]

Huh?

Maybe take your own advice and spare us your grumbling about the PARCC.

If you want to opt out and cause your school to lose federal funding, keep it to to yourself.

Hopefully, your kids’ absence will improve their school’s actual results.

[Anonymous]

The loss off Federal funding if families don't submit to ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2012) mandated testing is an idle threat.

Name one case where the Dept. of Ed pulled a school's Federal funding because parents opted out. You can't. There is none although more than one-quarter of the families in various school districts have opted out since the legislation came on line (in NY, NY, WA, OR, IN, OH etc.). Why do you believe that this is happening?

The new head of Standardized Assessments at OSSE has made it easier to opt out of PARCC this year than in 2019. You can make an arrangement with your school to remove your kid during testing blocks freely this year. Some of the DCPS elementary schools in NW will be providing supervision for families opting out in April & May. Ours plans to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Huh?

Maybe take your own advice and spare us your grumbling about the PARCC.

If you want to opt out and cause your school to lose federal funding, keep it to to yourself.

Hopefully, your kids’ absence will improve their school’s actual results.

Sounds like you're going at the wrong poster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The loss off Federal funding if families don't submit to ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2012) mandated testing is an idle threat.

Name one case where the Dept. of Ed pulled a school's Federal funding because parents opted out. You can't. There is none although more than one-quarter of the families in various school districts have opted out since the legislation came on line (in NY, NY, WA, OR, IN, OH etc.). Why do you believe that this is happening?

The new head of Standardized Assessments at OSSE has made it easier to opt out of PARCC this year than in 2019. You can make an arrangement with your school to remove your kid during testing blocks freely this year. Some of the DCPS elementary schools in NW will be providing supervision for families opting out in April & May. Ours plans to.

Sure, but Sections 1111 and 1116 of NCLB are clear, even if they may not be enforced. A lot of people cheat on their taxes too.

If your kid would do well on PARCC and you opt out of testing you are only hurting your kid’s school and making it harder for DCPS/PCSB, parents, and others to evaluate schools based on a common standard. PARCC scores factor in a school’s rating and reputation, and schools with high scores attract better students and teachers. Plus, PARCC will be especially useful this year to see which schools suffered the most Covid-19 learning loss. And what else is your kid going to do while his or her friends are testing? Watch TV? Play Minecraft?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The loss off Federal funding if families don't submit to ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2012) mandated testing is an idle threat.

Name one case where the Dept. of Ed pulled a school's Federal funding because parents opted out. You can't. There is none although more than one-quarter of the families in various school districts have opted out since the legislation came on line (in NY, NY, WA, OR, IN, OH etc.). Why do you believe that this is happening?

The new head of Standardized Assessments at OSSE has made it easier to opt out of PARCC this year than in 2019. You can make an arrangement with your school to remove your kid during testing blocks freely this year. Some of the DCPS elementary schools in NW will be providing supervision for families opting out in April & May. Ours plans to.

Sure, but Sections 1111 and 1116 of NCLB are clear, even if they may not be enforced. A lot of people cheat on their taxes too.

If your kid would do well on PARCC and you opt out of testing you are only hurting your kid’s school and making it harder for DCPS/PCSB, parents, and others to evaluate schools based on a common standard. PARCC scores factor in a school’s rating and reputation, and schools with high scores attract better students and teachers. Plus, PARCC will be especially useful this year to see which schools suffered the most Covid-19 learning loss. And what else is your kid going to do while his or her friends are testing? Watch TV? Play Minecraft?

Cheating on taxes is a weak analogy for opting out. Are you familiar with the the writings of Diane Ravitch, one of the architects of No Child Left Behind? She turned against NCLB mandates back around 2010, emerging as one of their staunchest critics with her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." In the years since, Ravitch has become a tireless advocate for ditching the testing system she helped create.

The point of seeing which schools suffered most during Covid-19 learning loss is what, exactly? If Bowser and WTU leaders cared about Covid learning loss, they wouldn't have ensured that DC was among the last several big cities in the country to re-open schools (along with San Fran and LA). Our ed leaders wouldn't have given up on virtual learning a month before the school year ended in 2020 (no other city did this; Philadelphia never even closed its public elementary schools). They wouldn't have failed to provide strong supports to help poor kids who fell far behind during school closures to catch up in the last year.

I don't believe for a minute that most middle-class parents in the District care half as much about PARCC scores in selecting schools as they care about demographics. If high test scores were needed to attract better students and teachers, heavily UMC DC public schools with lackluster PARCC scores, like YuYing, Hearst and Brent, wouldn't have become wildly popular in recent years. Parents wouldn't buy million houses on Capitol Hill to access Brent, which boasts among the highest teacher retention rates in the system.

What is my kid going to do while her friends are testing? I'm going to take her out during testing blocks, with school's permission, like I did with her older sibling in 2018 and 2019. She wants to learn more about the Revolutionary War, so we're going to head to the public library near the school to do research on the Founding Fathers. To each his/her/their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The loss off Federal funding if families don't submit to ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act, 2012) mandated testing is an idle threat.

Name one case where the Dept. of Ed pulled a school's Federal funding because parents opted out. You can't. There is none although more than one-quarter of the families in various school districts have opted out since the legislation came on line (in NY, NY, WA, OR, IN, OH etc.). Why do you believe that this is happening?

The new head of Standardized Assessments at OSSE has made it easier to opt out of PARCC this year than in 2019. You can make an arrangement with your school to remove your kid during testing blocks freely this year. Some of the DCPS elementary schools in NW will be providing supervision for families opting out in April & May. Ours plans to.

Sure, but Sections 1111 and 1116 of NCLB are clear, even if they may not be enforced. A lot of people cheat on their taxes too.

If your kid would do well on PARCC and you opt out of testing you are only hurting your kid’s school and making it harder for DCPS/PCSB, parents, and others to evaluate schools based on a common standard. PARCC scores factor in a school’s rating and reputation, and schools with high scores attract better students and teachers. Plus, PARCC will be especially useful this year to see which schools suffered the most Covid-19 learning loss. And what else is your kid going to do while his or her friends are testing? Watch TV? Play Minecraft?

Cheating on taxes is a weak analogy for opting out. Are you familiar with the the writings of Diane Ravitch, one of the architects of No Child Left Behind? She turned against NCLB mandates back around 2010, emerging as one of their staunchest critics with her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System." In the years since, Ravitch has become a tireless advocate for ditching the testing system she helped create.

The point of seeing which schools suffered most during Covid-19 learning loss is what, exactly? If Bowser and WTU leaders cared about Covid learning loss, they wouldn't have ensured that DC was among the last several big cities in the country to re-open schools (along with San Fran and LA). Our ed leaders wouldn't have given up on virtual learning a month before the school year ended in 2020 (no other city did this; Philadelphia never even closed its public elementary schools). They wouldn't have failed to provide strong supports to help poor kids who fell far behind during school closures to catch up in the last year.

I don't believe for a minute that most middle-class parents in the District care half as much about PARCC scores in selecting schools as they care about demographics. If high test scores were needed to attract better students and teachers, heavily UMC DC public schools with lackluster PARCC scores, like YuYing, Hearst and Brent, wouldn't have become wildly popular in recent years. Parents wouldn't buy million houses on Capitol Hill to access Brent, which boasts among the highest teacher retention rates in the system.

What is my kid going to do while her friends are testing? I'm going to take her out during testing blocks, with school's permission, like I did with her older sibling in 2018 and 2019. She wants to learn more about the Revolutionary War, so we're going to head to the public library near the school to do research on the Founding Fathers. To each his/her/their own.

Sounds like you should homeschool.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

No thanks. We like our in-boundary DCPS (8 years in). We've been on the LSAT and PTA board.

Good news that OSSE has stopped hassling families who opt out of PARC over attendance.