Massachusetts, Roland Fryer, and a “Two-tiered System of Standardized Testing”?
On November 17, 2015, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) will vote on either the PARCC assessments or the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as the statewide assessment system for Massachusetts.
In 2015, districts were able to decide on either PARCC or MCAS, with over half using PARCC.
Massachusetts commissioner Mitchell Chester is the chairs the governing board of the struggling PARCC consortium, and in November 2015, he is to make a formal recommendation to BESE on which assessment system to choose.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker has made two new appointments to BESE. One is Michael Moriarty, a Holyoke education and community development expert.
The other is Harvard University economist Roland Fryer, who was (hmmm…) promoted from assistant professor to full professor after a single year on the Harvard University faculty (and skipping right over associate professor, to boot).
Fryer is also the faculty director of Harvard University-based EdLabs, which describes itself as just a helpful group of individuals with no agenda:
We are an eclectic collection of scientists, educators, and implementers with diverse backgrounds and vast experience, generating ideas and implementing experiments that have the potential to transform education.Edlabs has no political affiliation or agenda to promote. We squeeze truths from data. People may not always like what we discover, but we will disseminate our results no matter what we find.
On the same web page EdLabs lists five “stakeholders.” Among them is Condoleeza Massachusetts, Roland Fryer, and a “Two-tiered System of Standardized Testing”? | deutsch29:
