Reply to Only 57% of MCPS students proficient in reading, 36% proficient in math

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kid did terrible at the MCAP. Just average scores. She is however 99th on MAP-R. Testing and knowledge are two different things. [/quote]

Oh interesting.  I wonder how common this is?  Not this exact disparity (99th percentile MAP kid scoring low on MCAP) but just in general kids being rated as "not proficient" on MCAP despite actually being proficient...[/quote]

Teachers and administrators have raised concerns about MCAP specifically for a long time. My 99th percentile kid did very well on MCAP for two years, then tanked it one year. What was different? Not the ability (MAP scores remained consistent), and not the effort (my kid is a Hermione Granger type who would die before purposefully throwing a test). Just...a bad day. Maybe she was coming down with something. Maybe she forgot to eat lunch. I have no idea, but it ultimately meant nothing. [/quote]

It’s hilarious how whenever the test scores are bad, school system defenders will insist there’s something wrong with the test and not the school system. And yet, when the scores are good, the system has no qualms about using them as evidence to crow about how great the system is.[/quote]
You have no idea of what you're talking about. 
MCAP started in 2021 and no school district in MD has done great on it since it started. There have been improvements but no district has done great. No school district has used MCAP as evidence to crow about how great they are. None.
It a bad assessment test. Schools administrators don't like it and students don't care about it. That's why the State had to make it a graduation requirement.
The new state superintendent was supposed to take a review of the MCAP. [/quote]

[b]State assessments existed before that, just with different names.[/b]

"In calendar 2018, MSDE announced the transition from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) to the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP). According to MSDE, this change was necessary so that State assessments were more reflective of the Maryland content standards and instruction."

Despite the years-long window from the time of announcement, many school systems, MCPS included, had difficulty transitioning to the new state content standards in reasonable time.  The top-down, inadequately funded state mandate required sourcing of new curricula & associated teacher training on a different cycle/timetable than had been planned, and the timing coincided with pandemic effects, which, themselves, had immediate and lingering effects on test scores.  (Though they gave more time, maybe MSDE better should have noted challenges with the prior transition from the Maryland School Assessments to PARCC for the 2014-15 school year.)

Simply put, despite the unifying promise of Common Core, MCPS classroom teaching had not aligned with the learning expectations inherent to the newer MSDE assessments.  Part of the year-to-year improvement is the result of better alignment, with more past years of that under students' belts.  That part should start to level off, along with the improvement due to pandemic recovery.  Part may be from other MCPS initiatives, of course, and that is where continuation of improvement might be sought.

Of course, that assumes that the state does not seek another confounding change to the assessments.[/quote]
Sigh! Did anyone say State assessment didn't exist before that?
We are talking about MCAP, which started in 2021.[/quote]

Is this information inaccurate?  Did administrators [i]like[/i] PARCC or the prior state assessments?  Did students care about them enough to focus and show their learning?

To wit, is MCAP really going to be a (relatively) bad assessment once LEAs (i.e., school districts) have emerged from lingering effects of the pandemic and of the old curricular mismatch?  Is it really a good idea for the state Superintendent to consider another change?  Should there be no state assessment at all on which MSDE might evaluate effectiveness of instruction from LEA to LEA or school to school?

DP from "It's hilarious...," above, BTW.[/quote]

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