Panelists say PARCC better fits needs of today’s students

Too many Massachusetts students graduate high school unprepared for the workforce or college, emphasized educational experts at The Boston Foundation’s “Understanding Boston: PARCC Assessment & College Readiness” forum last week.

Overwhelmingly, panelists spoke in support of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test.

On November 17, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will vote on whether to use PARCC to replace the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS. The vote follows on a pilot of PARCC in approximately half of Massachusetts school districts’ grades 3-8 last spring.

“The nation is watching Massachusetts and the board of Secondary and Elementary Education,” said Elizabeth Pauley, senior director of Education to Career at The Boston Foundation. “There are those who believe that so goes Massachusetts, so goes the PARCC test.”

On the panel were Robert V. Antonucci, president emeritus of Fitchburg State University; Paul Dakin, superintendent emeritus of Revere Public Schools; Richard M. Freeland, former commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education; Lindsay Sobel, executive director of Teach Plus Massachusetts; and William H. Swanson, retired chairman and CEO of Raytheon and current chairman of Massachusetts Competitive Partnership.

Graduated and nowhere to go

Panel members said it was time to move beyond MCAS, which was designed to measure if a student is prepared to graduate high school, to a test that better informs teachers on what they need to do to get students ready for careers or higher education.

Although many students enroll in college, a 2008 study found that only about 25 percent of high school graduates receive bachelor’s or associate’s degrees within six years, said Paul Grogan, Boston Foundation president and CEO.

Students entering college often are placed into remedial courses despite scoring well on the MCAS, said Sobel. This is problematic, said Freeland, because few remedial course students end up graduating.

“Only one in four students who take even one remediation course ever graduates from college,” Freeland said.

College completion is of increasing importance for meeting employers’ needs.

“Seventy-two percent of jobs in Massachusetts will require some college by 2020,” Pauley noted in her presentation. “We still see many students graduating from high school having met the graduation requirements, but not ready for college or the work force.”

“Despite the large number of unemployed in Massachusetts there are a large number of open jobs, because individuals in the workforce don’t have the skills employers need,” said Keith Mahoney, senior director of Public Affairs for The Boston Foundation, who moderated the panel.

The test’s advisory committee is working to have colleges accept PARCC scores for placement determination, allowing high scorers to test out of remedial courses, said Pauley.

Education goals

MCAS and PARCC assess different kinds of achievement skills, and therefore promoting different kinds of curriculums.

Panelists said that the MCAS emphasizes memorization skills, while PARCC is based on the Common Core curriculum and focuses on critical thinking and synthesis. Implementing PARCC would mean that the system would set new goals.

Antonucci served as state commissioner of education during MCAS’s development. He said the MCAS was an effective tool in ensuring that high schools graduate students with a common baseline of competency. Now that the test has served its purpose, he said, it is time for a test suited to current needs.

“We need either MCAS II or we need PARC,” Antonucci said. “If PARCC wasn’t developed at the national level we’d be developing a new MCAS at the state level.”

Teaching to the test

In today’s high-testing environment, a commonly expressed fear is that teachers design their curriculum around drilling for good test scores, not what is best for students’ education.

In the case of PARCC, Sobel sought to dispel this, saying that teachers had to teach well to assure students perform well on PARCC.

“What I hear over and over again from teachers is that with a really great test like PARCC, test prep is just better teaching and it’s inspiring them to be better teachers,” she said.

Dakin also emphasized that tests were feedback tools for teachers to assess how successful they are at reaching students and what areas need a new approach. Tests should not serve as mechanisms to assign blame, he said.

“What the tests do, if utilized properly, is give administrators in a building, teachers in a building, district administrators, an idea of how the implementation of those standards has metamorphosed itself in student learning,” he said. “What we often miss is that these tests are more for teachers than anyone.”

Accuplacer is the test currently used by state colleges to place students and determine college readiness. Freeland said PARCC is a better because it shows teachers areas in which students need improvement.

Practicality

Panelists said PARCC has pragmatic advantages.

Students can take the test by computer or on paper. The computerized and paper PARCC are $21 and $11 cheaper than MCAS, respectively, said Jeff Wulfson, chairman and deputy commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Dakin said in his experience, students spent 5 fewer hours on PARCC than MCAS.

Technology gap

Pauley said that in the spring 2015 pilot no major problems were reported with PARCC implementation, and 74 percent of students taking the English Language Arts test said they preferred using the computer.

Opponents to PARCC say poor test scores might reflect lack of computer skills, not lack of English or math ability, and that this may affect disadvantaged students particularly.

Sobel said that should such students score poorly on a computer test, this would be important information for educators to have. It would serve as an indicator to school officials that measures needed to be taken to better serve this population.

“What these assessments are doing is giving you a real honest assessment of how students are doing to be ready for that real high-stakes [adult] world,” she said. “Teachers I work with believe passionately in having that information and holding adults accountable to ensuring students get into that unforgiving, high-tech, high-stakes economy. … It’s backwards to blame the test for diagnosing something that is real.”

Panelists presented PARCC as an impetus for schools to teach 21st century tech skills.

Sobel said that many teachers who have been clamoring for modern technology may now receive it from schools eager to prepare students for tests.

“If a high-tech test is what we need to get kids the tech they need, then we should go for that. And I’ve heard from teachers that they are now getting that,” she said.

“Any new test should embrace technology so we can move students into the 21st century,” said Dakin.