Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now
According to Louisiana superintendent John White, a primary sell for Louisiana giving its illegitimate version of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is as follows:
For the first time, parents will be able to compare their children’s skills with the performance of students in other states.
So, once the next school year begins, parents will know how their children compared to children who completed the Pearson-contracted PARCC (which Louisiana is not part of) absent any detailed context of across-state differences in social and economic systems and with no ability whatsoever to “make” one state “resemble” another on any given desirable characteristic.
But this is test-score-driven “reform,” and its obsession with test scores must needs lead to some kind of comparison– hence the drive to compare among PARCC states just because that’s how it is supposed to be in the corporate reformer mind.
The PARCC consortium website continues to identify 12 states and DC as “PARCC states”: Arkansas, Colorado, DC, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.
However, a common listing does not comparability make.
New York is administering a different Pearson test this year, not PARCC; Massachusetts is only giving PARCC in some of its districts; Mississippi withdrew from using PARCC assessments in January 2015 and has contracted with Pearson for “emergency” exams to replace PARCC tests for 2015. And, of course, there’s Louisiana– a state that is giving its pencil-and-paper “PARCC” tests– tests created not by Pearson but by Data Recognition Corp (DRC).
So, if one considers which of the PARCC states are actually administering (or, shall Forget Test Scores: Let’s Rank Those PARCC States Now | deutsch29: