For all the changes that the state’s new PARCC testing has wrought for New Jersey’s public schools, one constant has prevailed: a wide and deep achievement gap.PARCC is a test, one of two (the other being Smarter Balanced) designed around the Common Core standards. It's a test. How can a test improve scores or improve the achievement gap? All a test can do is identify the deficiencies, it can't fix them.
The Christie administration yesterday released the school-by-school test scores from the second year of the new online testing last spring, and like the statewide scores released this summer, they should be mostly good news for schools.
Follow this Link to see your school’s scores.
Statewide, there were gains in passing rates in virtually every grade and most of the subgroups. Yesterday, state officials said nearly half of the students in many grades moved up a full tier in performance.
Nonetheless, the gaps in performance between students from families with different incomes or of different races have clearly persisted and even may have even widened in some cases under PARCC.
The couple minutes I spent reading that article? I want those minutes of my life back.
2 comments:
"PARCC is a test, one of two (the other being Smarter Balanced) designed around the Common Core standards. It's a test. How can a test improve scores or improve the achievement gap?"
Simple stats.
Imagine you give a test and get this simple result:
GROUP A: 720 Analysis; 700 Memorization; 1420 Total
GROUP B: 600 Analysis; 610 Memorization; 1210 Total
That's a 210 point gap.
Now you give a new test. Unless the questions are identical the effect may not be the same. If the new test causes more %age emphasis on Analysis, then the gap will increase, if the abilities are the same. If the new test causes more emphasis on Memorization, then the gap will decrease, if the abilities are the same.
And of course, if you add any other factors (in real life there are a ton of factors) then that will have an effect as well.
That said, it is important to remember one crucial thing: There is a tendency to assume that the first test is the "accurate" one and that the second test is wrong, but that isn't true.
It may be that the pre-PARCC test was accurate, and that PARCC overstates the gap. It may also be that PARCC is more accurate, and that the prior test understated the gap. We don't know which is which.
But saying that PARCC is *causing* the achievement gap is absurd. It's only measuring the gap.
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