Time to Move to PARCC

The Mass Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will make a major decision regarding standardized testing for the Commonwealth next Tuesday, November 17^th.

Massachusetts led standards-based education reform twenty years ago by establishing the highest set of education standards in the US, and working with educators and students to support their stepping up student outcomes as measured by the MCAS.

With arguably less marginal return to those reforms in recent years, MBAE has advocated moving into ed reform 2.0 in its New Opportunity to Lead report (March 2014).  Among its recommendations for narrowing achievement gaps and ending the pattern of 37% of students who pass MCAS needing remedial work in college is to stay the course in implementing high standards and aligned assessments.

I think that most agree that it is time to move to the next generation of assessment, in order to

• Take advantage of technology to provide an assessment which does more to tap into the application of knowledge,  and assess problem solving, critical thinking and writing
• Construct a test that is aligned with the new MA learning standards and aligned across grade levels
• Be acceptable to colleges as a measure for college placement (eliminating the need for Accuplacer)

Recent surveys of both teachers (TeachPlus) and principals (MassInc) indicate that they favor the higher standards in the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and the higher standards of assessment provided by PARCC, the Partnership for Assessment of College and Career Readiness. Studies from the Fordham Institute and the Center for Assessment point to PARCC’s superiority over MCAS.

Construction of such assessments is a major undertaking, and Massachusetts is too small a state to be able to afford to do so on its own. Massachusetts has been a founding member and guide of the PARCC consortium. PARCC enables Massachusetts to customize its own test, add items and control its offering. At the same time, the state benefits by not having to bear the cost of such a major assessment development effort.

Educators have moved to the new learning standards, and have been proceeding through a phase of careful testing to understand how to implement this change. More than half of school districts have used the PARCC assessment.

It is critical to support the use of the PARCC assessment by all districts this spring. Massachusetts can call the test MCAS 2.0 if it prefers, but the assessment should be PARCC. There is not time to change what test should be offered in April, and MCAS is now “too long in the tooth.”

The move to the next generation assessment has been deliberate and has proceeded over multiple years. I hope that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will not reverse course when it votes on November 17^th.

I understand that there is considerable concern that students are “overtested” and believe that all systems would benefit by reviewing what tests are offered when. However, that is the not the question in front of the Board. New technologies will change student assessment in the coming years. As adaptive learning technologies such as Curriculum Associates’ (based in Billerica)  iReady,  are adopted by schools,  we will gradually mix  assessment into curricula. New technologies are being developed that will help scale “performance assessments” furthering the support for meaningful student assessments that are not multiple choice; new technologies will assist in the use of sampling student work in many media and match them to grade level performance. “Competency-based” approaches are being developed to enable personalized learning and pacing.

For this year, however, the right move is the move to PARCC. In business, “you get what you measure.” Let’s move forward now with what we measure from MCAS to PARCC. A focus on student growth, rather than solely on rates of proficiency, will also support continuous improvement by our schools.

Eileen Rudden is a business leader and investor from the technology sector. She served as Chief of College and Career Preparation for the Chicago Public Schools. She is currently a member of the MBAE Board of Directors and a co-founder of LearnLaunch.