Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child
By Anonymous Actual Teacher (AAT), Maryland, Feb. 10, 2015
Does everyone remember having to deal with spoiled classmates or spoiled kids in the neighborhood when they were younger? Maybe other parents looked the other way when the little angel would throw a fit to get her way. Well, we hope you can use that experience to help get ready for upcoming PARCC assessments.
The PARCC assessments have evolved into the spoiled child rewriting the rules for a birthday party. She tells the children what to wear, what to buy her for presents, gives little advance notice to prepare, and tells the children, “By the way, I don’t want to have a party – we are having brunch.”
As a teacher preparing students for PARCC assessments, we are told that the PARCC assessments won’t allow certain special education accommodations. So apparently the folks at the US Department of Education who monitor special education compliance are either okay with this or in the dark with this. So our district notified staff in mid-January, via meetings and trainings attended by administrators, test coordinators, ESOL teachers, and special education staff, that we need to hurry up and put temporary changes into children’s official documents on special education just for the purpose of the PARCC assessments. Spoiled child 1, School Districts and Special Education Law, 0.
If your child was read to before, maybe not now! Spoiled child gets her way. If your child was able to use a calculator before, maybe not – new criteria! Too bad, students with disabilities! PARCC staff must know best, without norming data available for how children with disabilities will do, PARCC mandates that this happens. Go back and read your invitation again. It’s all there. The PARCC website has information on accommodations. Usually, test sites don’t contain that – the state departments of education have an accommodations manual on their site. Spoiled Child 2, State Department of Education and Children with Disabilities, 0.
Let’s follow the process – States adopt Common Core, states do away with their state tests, Common Core requires new testing, PARCC offers new testing, PARCC decides (and their director apparently has little or no special education experience, based on her bio on the DC Board of Education web site) that some accommodations for students with disabilities simply won’t be allowed. What this decision is based on is questionable, since obviously there is no norming data or scientific research on this in terms of PARCC assessing what it purports to assess – or why wouldn’t states already have eliminated those Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child - Living in Dialogue: