An education model worth exploring
April 2, 2014New Action to Improve Teacher Preparation
April 28, 2014
Commissioner of Higher Education Richard Freeland is joining the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) at their monthly meeting tonight to discuss “options for transition of the high school Competency Determination (CD) requirements – that is, the state standards that students must meet to qualify for high school graduation – to include PARCC assessments.” This is an important part of the two-year process that the BESE is undertaking to develop and adopt new assessments that will measure college and career readiness of our students – and give them a true indication if they are on track in early grades to graduate ready for postsecondary pursuits of any kind.
The fact that the BESE is talking with officials from higher education is very important since the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks adopted in 2010 were designed to better prepare students to begin earning college credit or qualify for entry-level jobs, with the costly and time consuming need for remediation. Currently, over a third of the students who enter 4-year public higher education and two-thirds of those at community college must take a developmental, or remedial, course to qualify for placement in a college-level class.
The discussion will continue at tomorrow’s BESE meeting with an update on the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career) field test. We encourage Commissioner Mitchell Chester and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to make this information about the process and current status of PARCC widely available so concerned parents and citizens can get the facts and understand why getting this right is so important.