NPR Is Gaga about PARCC and Its State-comparison Potential
On August 07, 2015, NPR released this piece concerning setting the cut scores for the PARCC tests that students took in the spring.
NPR 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 teaching colleague, Herb Bassett, observed as much in a FB posting of the NPR link:
Explains how a committee is in process of determining which students passedNPR Is Gaga about PARCC and Its State-comparison Potential | deutsch29:
