Even As States Continue to Leave, PARCC Sets Last Year's Cut Scores
On August 07, 2015, NPR released an article concerning setting the cut scores for the PARCC tests that 5 million students took in the spring.
Originally entitled, "Who Is 'Good Enough' in a Common Core World?", the NPR article title was changed to "New Tests Push Schools to Define 'Good Enough."
Perhaps it was a bit too close to the true, original intention of Common Core to turn all of American public education into a "Common Core World" for NPR to actually allow as much in the title of one of its pieces.
In that piece, NPR writer Cory Turner makes this statement:
...Until last year, it was all but impossible to compare students across state lines. Not anymore.
This is not true. States have been required to participate in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).
What is interesting is that the Fordham Institute's grading of state standards (and finding in favor of Common Core even though it did not give Common Core a higher rating than all state standards) demonstrates no connection between their ratings of state standards and NAEP scores.
So now, we have PARCC, and according to NPR, we have a number of individuals meeting to "nail down cut scores for those 5 million tests."
If anyone tells you that PARCC or any other standardized test is by definition objective, don't buy it.
Instead, believe what Center for Public Education director Patte Barth says in that NPR piece:
"Establishing cut scores is part science. It's part art. But it's also part political."
I wonder which part dominates.
Tough call, eh?
So, it seems, this group in Denver is going to make sure that states cannot produce an "illusion of improvement." What is missing, however, is any established connection between PARCC, it's Denver-ballroom-basement-meeting-set cut scores, and previous tests used by the states.
My Louisiana teaching colleague, Herb Bassett, observed as much regarding the NPR link:
Explains how a committee is in process of determining which students passed and which failed the PARCC this year. The scores required for passing (the cut scores) have not yet been set even though the tests have been taken.This radio piece sells the point that for the first time, proficiency tests will be comparable across some states. However, there is no way to compare them to the tests (LEAP and iLEAP) from years past. Thus, there is no way to determine ifEven As States Continue to Leave, PARCC Sets Last Year's Cut Scores | Mercedes Schneider: