Tuesday, November 20, 2012

PARCC- The Good and The Bad



The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a 23-state consortium working together to develop next-generation K-12 assessments in English and Mathematics. The 23 member states of PARCC collectively educate about 25 million public K-12 students in the United States. This assessment is to align with the Common Core State Standards that are being adopted by the majority of states in the U.S. with the goal of building pathways to college and career readiness for all students. As with every change, especially in the education field, there are pros and cons. Below is an overview of the pros and cons of the recently formed PARCC.
Pros
o   Students will know if they are on track to graduate ready for college and careers
o   Includes items across different levels of cognitive functioning
o   Teachers will have regular results available to guide learning and instruction
o   Provides the opportunity for participating states to come together and collectively move the field forward and break new ground in assessment design
o   Parents will have clear and timely information about the progress of their children
o   Has the ability to assess and measure higher-order skills such as critical thinking, communications, and problem solving
o   It is a summative AND formative assessment
o   Can be used as online digital libraries for sharing of instructional resources, professional development modules, student support materials, identification of effective practices, etc.
o   States will be able to have valid results that are comparable across the member states consider that 44% of students change schools at least once between kindergarten and the end of third grade
o   The nation’s education will be based on college- and career-ready, internationally benchmarked Common Core State Standards
o   Better prepare students going to college in English and Math considering one-third of freshmen must take and pay for remedial courses in math and/or English at two- and four-year colleges before they can even begin their chosen course of study
o   Can highlight where gaps may exist and how they can be addressed well before students enter college or the workforce
Cons
o   Fear of educators “teaching to the test”
o   Emphasis on informative texts in the Language Arts section and not enough emphasis on creative writing and literature
o   Public perception of just another “standardized test”
o   Financing- The two coalitions designing the tests won grants from the federal government to pay for the beginning of the process, but this funding won’t cover ongoing expenses related to the tests, like paying people to score answer sheets and the cost of new computers and expanded bandwidth
o   Use of individual student growth in determinations of teacher and principal effectiveness
o   Difficulty in a standardized test to truly reveal students’ knowledge, skills, AND understanding
o   Although there are included tests items across different levels of cognitive functioning, there is no reference to the assessment of students receiving Special Education services
o   The more complex, non-multiple choice questions will likely require a trained evaluator to score them
o   Difficulty in representing the full range of knowledge, skills and understanding encompassed in test objectives
While this is not an exhaustive list of all the possible pros and cons of PARCC, it provides a clear view of both sides of the story. It is evident one of the dominating, positive features of PARCC is that it aims to encompass a unitary assessment for all member states in order to provide comparable results on student achievement and college and career readiness. With over 40 states adopting the Common Core State Standards, it is imperative that a unitary, research-based assessment paradigm is in place to evaluate these standards as related to students’ college and career readiness. However, there is always a debate over the effectiveness and credibility of a “standardized test” to truly measure all areas of students’ ability. Only time will tell if PARCC will be an adequate and appropriate measure of these abilities after its official, planned implementation in the 2014-2015 school year.

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