Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If enough families would opt out of testing perhaps th ey would stop using as a primary tool for judgment of teachers and school quality.

That is a terrible way to address the issue.

Disagree! it is the only tool we have. If over 50% of families opt their kids out the scores would mean a hell of a lot less. And if 75% of families opt their kids out the scores would mean nothing. Then maybe we could get back to teaching and engaging kids and not bowing to corporate interests. And teachers could be evaluated fairly. Start writing your opt out letters folks tune of samples and helpful advice online. Let’s render that’s data USELESS

In this day and age all schools must provide some form of assessment. In most of Europe all students are assessed and these are high-stakes as they determine access to university! Are the assessments perfect, no but students take them seriously. The problem in the USA is that there is no national form of exams, something the Common Core is attempting to do, the PARCC was supposed to measure success learning the CORE standards. The college and career readiness I believe has misguided people. Is it a perfect test NO, but it is really not that hard. Problems with administration - yes, because not all schools have the technology or have trained students how to use it, but lowering the standards or not using some measure is problematic. We should be upset that children are scoring so poorly, more that we should be obsessing about the assessment itself. The PARCC should give teacher's more data points like the SOL so you understand more which skills schools are not teaching well, but you need to use some objective measures.

Get back to teaching... LOL... What a joke. Schools need to have some form of accountability, some way to compare and measure student growth. PARCC may not be the best assessment, however the problem is the school administering the test. Each school does it different, while some do it well, many struggle.

Also, good teachers dont worry about PARCC or testing, they teach and their students learn. If you teach the kids, they will do fine on the test.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If enough families would opt out of testing perhaps th ey would stop using as a primary tool for judgment of teachers and school quality.

That is a terrible way to address the issue.

Disagree! it is the only tool we have. If over 50% of families opt their kids out the scores would mean a hell of a lot less. And if 75% of families opt their kids out the scores would mean nothing. Then maybe we could get back to teaching and engaging kids and not bowing to corporate interests. And teachers could be evaluated fairly. Start writing your opt out letters folks tune of samples and helpful advice online. Let’s render that’s data USELESS

PARCC is not the problem. DCPS general dysfunction and inability to educate children is a huge issue.
If we did not have PARCC, there would be even less accountability.

Agree, +100.

The original links are about how other systems
are stopping them because they stink not because of how easy or hard they are. The main problem I have is the amount of time spend teaching to the test at the expense of spending that time on better ways to teach and a range of subjects. I don’t care that my kids can score a 5 on a stupid standardized test that they are trained like monkeys for and I do care that is happening at the expense of social studies, additional science, more creative and challenging language arts etc

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are some ways in which the PARCC test is inherently bad, but one reason a lot of states have dumped it is that it is HARD and it is difficult for them (politically and otherwise) to accept and pay for a test on which many of their their students have low scores.

In some ways, PARCC is not appropriate for ages at which it is aimed. Also, it's a gigantic experiment, so who's to say whether it really identifies those who are college/career ready? If you were sitting for a test in French, and I gave you a test in Russian, or half Russian/half pig Latin, would the test be "hard"? Or would it be a waste of time?

The only link to a study of PARRC and the other two tests above on this chain actually found them to be fairly effective as I read it. There is no indication that they are as off as giving a test in the wrong language. I have two children that have taken the tests, they have done very well. Top of their actual grade in their school and better than 99 percent of the country in most cases. My middle schooler is also a straight A student (the younger doesn’t have letter grades yet). It may be hard, it may be harder than it should be for the grade but it is not the equivalent of testing Russian in pig Latin. These extremist reactions make it impossible to talk about how to improve the tests. I completely admit there were problems and growing pains in implementation and to the extent they are wrong there may be kids that are on track to college readiness that don’t do well. But I don’t buy that they are not testing depth of knowledge.

massive waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:There are some ways in which the PARCC test is inherently bad, but one reason a lot of states have dumped it is that it is HARD and it is difficult for them (politically and otherwise) to accept and pay for a test on which many of their their students have low scores.

In some ways, PARCC is not appropriate for ages at which it is aimed. Also, it's a gigantic experiment, so who's to say whether it really identifies those who are college/career ready? If you were sitting for a test in French, and I gave you a test in Russian, or half Russian/half pig Latin, would the test be "hard"? Or would it be a waste of time?

Anonymous wrote:I have yet to read any specifics about how the tests are “bad”, how are they “bad”?

My kids do well and their teachers/classes are not teaching to the test and rote memorization. Why shouldn’t we be worried that so many students find them so hard? Isn’t the point to identify where schools need improvement.

They are poorly designed, and it's not even clear that they are accurate (I've read stories in the past about Pearson's answer keys to practice tests and textbooks being factually wrong. It's not clear that they actually measure what they are meant to measure well. I don't have time to do a deep Google, but here's an article about the problems Pearson was having before PARCC.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/05/06/a-history-of-pearsons-testing-problems-worldwide/?utm_term=.b32987712991

I have yet to read any specifics about how the tests are “bad”, how are they “bad”?

My kids do well and their teachers/classes are not teaching to the test and rote memorization. Why shouldn’t we be worried that so many students find them so hard? Isn’t the point to identify where schools need improvement.

There are some ways in which the PARCC test is inherently bad, but one reason a lot of states have dumped it is that it is HARD and it is difficult for them (politically and otherwise) to accept and pay for a test on which many of their their students have low scores.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:During the hearing last week, people brought up using the Regent's exam from NY. Is that a well-regarded test?

The Regents exam is for high school students only.

This chart shows which states used what test for grades 3-8 and high school in 2016-17.

Here's the link https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/states-using-parcc-or-smarter-balanced.html

The PARCC test is particularly bad -- accountability is not inherently bad, but this test is a particularly bad one, so much that NJ and IL just dumped it - and many other states using it only use portions or adapted versions. DC shouldn't be a hold out for hanging on to something flawed just because it's 'there'

Anonymous wrote:All states (also DC) must have some accountability measure in place to receive federal funds.

For grades 3-8 that is a statewide assessment. We can choose which one, but cannot opt out without a huge cost.

The states should ban together and fight this requirement! It is ruining our education system and children!

All states (also DC) must have some accountability measure in place to receive federal funds.

For grades 3-8 that is a statewide assessment. We can choose which one, but cannot opt out without a huge cost.