After An Educator's Journey

Brain Research Matters!

March 8, 2016
Ken Wesson, asks this question

If it’s your job to develop the mind, shouldn’t you know how the brain works?

I would add, and if your job is to develop the curriculum or make an assessment of that young mind, you also need to know how the brain works.

The brain science, based on the work of Dr. Wesson, tells us that a child’s sustained attention can be predicted fairly accurately.
- Ages 4-5 = 5 – 10 minutes
- Ages 6-8 = 15- 20 minutes
- Ages 9-12 = 22-35 minutes
This is real data based on real brain research. Data-driven. Gail Boushey and Joan Moser (the Two Sisters of the Daily Five), support this research in their work organizing and managing instructional structures for children (see prior post).

When reading Jeffrey Brosco’s article about increasing ADD/ADHD rates among young children (link to article above), and the array of pharmaceuticals and their side effects (WebMD), it makes one wonder about the numbers of children diagnosed as ADHD/ADD. Could the increased numbers of diagnoses be driven by children who are responding to inappropriately long and stressful attention span demands? Is there an organic reason for a diagnosis? Or is the diagnosis driven by developmentally inappropriate demands on kids?

For the educational “experts” creating those packed curricula, demanding “time on task”, and sustained periods of testing, brain research must be considered. But it isn’t, of course. We continue to subject children to long periods of academics, especially high stakes testing, requiring attention beyond what they are capable.

Brain Research matters.
School Committee Meeting, 02 March 2016

March 3, 2016

School Committee Meeting: Wednesday, March 2, 2016

All members present.

This meeting, the first since February 3 due to the Winter vacation week cancellation, was extra lengthy – 37 items. The highlights are posted below.

Special Order of Business: Spotlight on Youth Mental Health First Aid

This new program was funded through a $100,000 federal grant and trains staff and community members to recognize and offer resources to youth who need to be connected to mental health supports. Not only school staff, but community members (Middlesex Community College, UTEC, Public Health nurses, Boys and Girls Club, etc.) receive an 8-hour training and in turn, become resources at their organizations for staff not yet trained. The grant represents a collaborative effort between Project Learn and the community.

No one wants to miss the signs of a mental health trauma and wonder later if there was some resource that could have helped a youth in crisis. This program sounds like it has been and will continue to be a strong support for our community’s youth who need mental health support. Although the grant funding for this program is coming to an end, the coordinators expressed confidence that the “train the trainer” model will allow the program to continue through the use of trained in-house expertise and possibly a series of videos.

Motions

There were 5 motions on the agenda, although one (2016/91) was withdrawn (no reason given).

Given the revival and renewed interest in the Citywide Parent Council, Mr. Descoteaux and Ms. Doherty, requested (2016/86) a report detailing the parent involvement in each school along with meeting times. The Superintendent’s Report (2016/101) on Parent Involvement provided some detail on the state of parent involvement at this point. Both Mr. Descoteaux and Ms. Doherty stressed that School Site Councils (a blend of school staff and parents) and other parent involvement-based groups are mandated as part of education reform.

Several schools did not submit information or submitted incomplete information pointing to the need to refocus on including parents in both school-based and city-wide decision-making. Dr. Khelfaoui was quite adamant that all schools will renew their efforts to include parents in schools.

Although participation in parent involvement groups have, over time fallen off, in the past, parent input was routinely sought for such things as the school’s USIP (Unified School Improvement Plan) as well as more routine decision making such as evening events (game nights, curriculum informational nights, etc.). My opinion is that the success of any school or classroom depends on a trusting, shared relationship between parent, school (teacher), and student. It has been my experience that most parents want to know about their child’s education and want to be a part of it no matter the life circumstances that might be interferring. Renewing the Citywide Parents, increasing parent advocacy and support, and insisting that every school include parents in meaningful school discussion and decision-making will make Lowell schools strong and vibrant.

Two additional motions (2016/90 and 2016/93) addressed the next school budget cycle. Mr. Gary Frisch, the new school business administrator, has committed to preparing a draft budget by mid-April so that the School Committee can go about reviewing and approval processes prior to May 2. Because of the tight deadline, the mid-April School Committee meeting (previously cancelled), may need to be reinstated.

The final motion (2016/97) by Ms. Martin requested a standing Curriculum and Instruction subcommittee time; however, after much discussion by the committee and clarification of the protocol for scheduling subcommittee meetings as standing meetings by Mayor Kennedy, the original motion was withdrawn and a substitute motion for including the full School Committee in some activities of the subcommittee was approved.

Reports of the Superintendent

There were 12 reports from the Superintendent. Due to some confusion over 2017 February School Vacation, the School Committee meeting dates and School Calendar for 2016-17 may contain an error (to be reviewed and presented for final approval at next meeting). Several reports were responses to motions made by former Mayor Elliott about scholarship information (it sounded like communication of the two scholarship opportunities may have unintentionally slipped and that this has been remedied for the future). There was also a response to Mayor Kennedy’s STEM curriculum proposal. This information is thoroughly outlined in the packet for those wondering what STEM offerings are currently offered and what the plans for increase STEM coursework.

Additionally, Assistant Superintendent Durkin offered an update (2016/89) on the LPS response to complying with new (January 1, 2016) regulations from DESE regarding student restraint. However, the reports (see packet) are quite lengthy and the Committee needed more time to process the reports. By working throughout the fall, the LPS has addressed the new regulations and they are compliant with the new regulations; however, the report was referred to Student Support subcommittee prior to formal acceptance.

Two programs impacting student success were highlighted in this portion of the meeting: the Dropout and Recovery Program (2016/96) and Middle School Intervention Program and Policy (2016/102). There is plenty of statistical detail for both programs in the packet; however the presentation for both of these programs was quite impressive. With collaboration and persistent effort to reach all affected youth, the drop out rate in Lowell is effectively 1.6% – an historically low number.

The High School staff know exactly who has not been attending school, who is in danger of giving up and therefore dropping out, and makes a multi-prong effort to reach out to students. However, that is not the end. Through collaboration with many supportive partnerships and departments, students in danger of dropping out are only encouraged to continue schooling through meaningful and often personalized solutions and support. This enables that student to continue their education and obtain a High School diploma. Examples of such supports include allowing a student who is juggling infant/child care to come in during 2nd period to accommodate childcare arrangements, and finding ways to make up missing credits (credit recovery). Knowing how essential it is to continue to reach disengaged students and not give up on them, this is truly an effort to be recognized.

Sometimes, the most effective solution is a result of looking for creative ways to solve a problem and that, it seems, is what has been the result of defunding summer school at the Middle Schools. Ms. Durkin explained that when summer school (estimated costs $250,000) was defunded, her office cobbled together about $20,000 from a variety of budget sources. With that money, the Middle Schools offered extra interventions (before/after school, Saturdays, April vacation) for students in danger of failing coursework or in danger of non-promotion. Middle School administrators reported that the interventions were far more successful than Summer School.

The packet contains details for these two programs, but a suggestion might be to look for the re-broadcast of the meeting or the LTC video link for this meeting online. Discussion and presentations for the two items come up somewhere in the vicinity of the 90 minute mark.

New Business

The biggest item from this portion of the meeting was the School Committee’s approval of the United Teachers of Lowell (UTL) and Lowell School Administrators (LSAA) contracts. The principals’ and Assistant Superintendents as well as SEIU were discussed in Executive Session.

The contracts were approved quickly with virtually no discussion save the comment by Mr. Gendron that this was the best agreement for all parties along with a stated wish that the contract could have been 3 years, not two. The negotiations on a successor contract will begin shortly.

Those viewing the meeting may have wondered why Mr. Descoteaux recused himself from the vote. Mr. Descoteaux, like I, retired in June 2016, and the recently ratified and signed contract will have a personal financial impact. As I understand it, there will be benefit from the 0.5% increase that went into effect in January 2015 as there will be a change and adjustment in salary reporting to MTRS for the purpose of pension computations.

For the uninitiated, pension amounts (funded through contributions to Massachusetts Teacher Retirement System or MTRS) are impacted by collective bargaining agreements as a retiree’s pension amount is a percentage (based on age and years of service) of the average of the highest (usually the last) 3 years of remuneration.

When a collective bargaining agreement has lapsed, as it did in Lowell, the reported salary for a teacher is considered tentative. In simple terms, as far as MTRS is concerned, any Lowell teacher who retired last June will need an updated 3-year salary average, and recalculated monthly pension amount. Since Mr. Descoteaux is benefiting from the “new” contract, he must recuse himself from the vote.

The meeting packet can be found here.
A Vicious Cycle

February 20, 2016

So, what would you say an unexpected by-product of ed reform might be? With loss of autonomy in what to teach when, emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing and little control over just about anything else in the educational day, teachers are leaving some districts for transfers to more affluent schools and for other careers.

I mention this because it is challenging to teach in a gateway – or as the Pioneer Institute referred to it last week “middle” – city. And because the Lowell Schools are making an effort to diversify faculty and staff.

This article addresses this very issue and was published by In These Times last August. It clearly points to the challenge of hiring and retaining teaching staff in these times of education reform. As you read the article, consider the challenge of attracting teaching candidates who are impassioned to work as educators with a diverse and challenging student population.

The by-product of education reform is fall-out of professional teaching staff. As professional educators reach their limits of stress, do they move to a less challenging district? Or do they leave for a career in another field, perhaps related, where the environment is less toxic?

So what does happens as a result of corporate reforms overtaking the education landscape? Is there a reliance on Teach for America trained (and I use that term loosely) or alternative certification?

Here’s Kevin Posen’s take from the In These Times article:

In order to fill the gaps, licensure rules are relaxed and “supports” are provided for an increasingly amateur workforce—through prefabricated curriculum and assessments. And the cycle starts all over again. The demoralization of the American teacher is leading to the deskilling of their profession, which leads to teacher resignations, which leads to more demoralization, ad infinitum.

In other words – a vicious cycle for educators and education.
Education: What is Equity?

February 19, 2016

Ludlow Superintendent Todd Gazda posed this question in a recent Commonwealth Magazine article: What is equity? Because, as Dr. Gazda points out, current education policy tends toward equalizing education for all students with standardized curriculums proven by standardized assessment and incentivized “business systems” for implementation.

Equity, like fairness, is not treating every student the same, but rather focuses on giving every student what they need. – Todd Gazda, Commonwealth Magazine

Any educator who has worked for a nanosecond in a classroom knows the truth of that quote. Twenty-five inquiring minds can, at any point in a school day, need twenty-five different things. One may need teacher to soothe a physical hurt. Or another may not have eaten since the last school day. And another may have witnessed a domestic assault at home.

How do you suppose each of these children might engage in learning? Would they be able to engage in the instruction in the same way? Would they have mastered the content objective for the day? No, equity is not treating each child the same.

Which is why teaching, to me, is not a science that can be boiled down to a set of steps that ~~everyone~~ anyone can do; it is an art. We can expect our students to work and master content. We can hold students to high expectations and have faith and confidence that they will soar. But we should not expect our children to do this in lockstep.

Equity in teaching is taking children where they are, determining what is needed to move ahead, and giving each the supports they need to get there, no matter how long it may take to do so.

Our state and national leaders need to have the courage to allow educators to educate all students. With equity.
Editing & Revising with Peers

February 10, 2016
As a writer and, as a teacher, I value collaboration with peers. I know that my writing is made more clear, more interesting, and more precise when I rely on a trusted “critical friend” to offer constructive feedback. And so, when the Commonwealth’s writing standards included peer revising as well as adult conferring, the inclusion of critical friends in the Writing Process made sense. Beginning in Grade 2, Writing Standard 5 includes this important progression of peer revision and peer editing. [Refer to the Writing Standards (“Code W”) by grade level beginning on page 26 of the 2011 Frameworks.]

From my experience, elementary students must be taught explicitly how to do this. They need good models of what peer conferring looks like. As a proponent of the Daily Five, I found the 10 Steps to Independence model to be an ideal teaching method for introducing peer editing and revising to my students.

Students at the elementary level need some structure for learning how to be a helpful peer editor or revisor; and to this end, I was fortunate to get an offer for some coaching from our former Literacy Coach, Patricia Sweeney. Pat provided a structure for the students: 2 compliments and a suggestion. Here were the guidelines:
- The author reads the piece from beginning to end without interruption
- The revisor/editor offers 2 compliments. Personal references (“I like...”) were excluded; more constructive/objective language included (“When you wrote…, your writing was… (very clear, powerful, descriptive, etc.”).
- No “buts” – one of my 3rd and 4th graders favorites, because what 9-year old can resist telling another to get their “but” out of writing. (When you wrote …., your description was very clear, BUT…)
- The revisor/editor can offer 1 suggestion (so not to overwhelm the author all at once), jotting on a stick-on note. (You might want to …. or Your writing might be more powerful if …). The author can agree or disagree with the suggestion, but listens and takes it “under advisement”.
This structure provided the students with two things: a language framework for offering constructive feedback and an opportunity to apply grade-level writing skills as the “student” become the “teacher”.

These peer-led conferences always took place prior to conferring with an adult and prior to producing a final version of the writing. Peers did not assess another student’s writing, but offered constructive criticism for the purpose of helping the author improve upon the writing.

Exactly what my adult peer editor and revisor does for me.
School Committee Meeting, 03 February 2016

February 4, 2016
School Committee Meeting: Wednesday, February 3, 2016

All members present.

Subcommittees

The Subcommittee on Policy, chaired by Mr. Hoey, met on January 27th. The report from the meeting suggested a change to the LPSD school purchasing policy so that LPSD purchasing aligns with the City of Lowell purchasing policy. Much discussion about the threshold of a requests (currently $5,000; proposed $35,000) that would trigger a Permission to Enter. While the full committee supports the editorial changes (see meeting packet), there is a larger discussion about retaining the $5,000 threshold for a variety of reasons, number one being to keep a handle on how the school budget is being spent. This discussion will continue at the next school committee meeting.

Reports of the Superintendent

Three agenda items (2016/43, 2016/50 and 2016/44) addressed school year and School Committee calendars. The Calendar for the upcoming school year was approved after Ms. Martin received clarification that the Massachusetts State Primary date was indeed a Thursday (9/8) and not a Tuesday (9/6). The reason for the move to a Thursday election day is explained here, but in simple terms, the change is necessary to comply with Federal regulations for the distribution of absentee ballots to overseas voters.

The new calendar is posted here.

As several Lowell schools are used as polling sites, the reality of post-Newtown building safety is that schools are closed for students during election days. This policy also necessitated a revision to the 2015-2016 calendar to accommodate the Primary Election on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. The revision means that the end of school dates on the posted calendar need to be revised to comply with the mandated 180-day school year for students. The new end dates (pending any snow days) are: June 16 (180th day with no snow days) or June 23 (185 days with 5-day snow allowance). And of course if there are more than 5 snow days between now and June 23, the school year extends further. [Revision 05 February 2016: New last date is June 17 due to snow cancellation today.]

Agenda Item 2016/44, a request to reschedule February and April School Committee dates so that meetings are not taking place during school vacation weeks when interested parents or community members may wish to take part was amended. The meetings are now cancelled with the possibility of a Special Meeting of the School Committee scheduled if the need for such a meeting arises.

Agenda Item 2016/58 addressed the need to hire an additional teacher and paraprofessional at the Bartlett School for students enrolled in a Life Skills program. The requested funding was $64,789. Currently, the number of students enrolled in the program exceeds the compliance number by 3 students. After some discussion about funding (Ms. Martin points out this is the second meeting in a row that a request for a position was made) and what compliance for the program is, the item is approved.

While on the surface, three students does not seem like it would be a significant number of children to accommodate, the Special Education Department must ensure compliance with regulations in order to adhere to state and federal laws. All students need to have access to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment (LRE). If you are unfamiliar with what LRE means, this link provides good summary information.

In order to be compliant with special education regulations, the ratio of students to teacher & paraprofessional in the Life Skills program should be no more than 12:1 (note that preschool ratios are 9:1). As Ms. McCrystal (Special Education Director) explained, to achieve the compliant ratio, three students would need to be sent to an outside-of-district placement for their education, a decision that would not be necessitated by need but by number. Cost estimates for placing for one student out-of-district would be about $50,000 not including transportation.

Three additional agenda Items address:
- athletic participation at Lowell High,
- an update on engaging the legislative delegation and Lowell’s concerns regarding Newcomer programs (and the difference between reimbursement and program costs which are significant), and
- an update for Community Service Day in the Lowell Schools.
The biggest discussion of the meeting was in response to the LHS Investigation Report (Agenda Item 2016/65). The report has been made public and can be found here.

Among the many suggestions and discussions regarding information and suggestions in the report is one complicated question: Do Lowell School staff members – in all schools, not just the high school – mirror the diversity in the schools? And if not, how can the schools achieve greater diversity among staff?

The redacted report has been the subject of much discussion throughout the community; there are of course, privacy and personnel matters that impact the release of the redacted information. The Superintendent appears to be following the advice of counsel, and I would like to allow him the opportunity to follow-through. The suggestions that were made public seem minimal and should be acted on immediately. When an event this important happens to make our students and families feel unsafe, looking back at what happened and where breaks in protocol occurred are important. Ensuring that staff at all levels understand and comply with procedures no matter who is involved and increasing sensitivity and awareness to cultural differences and issues of race are imperative to school culture and the safety of all families and students.

One important suggestion in the report is to engage in more diverse hiring practices. Changing to a more culturally and ethnically inclusive faculty and staff is not necessarily something that happens overnight. Engaging in more inclusive recruiting and hiring from a more diverse field of candidates is just the first step, in my opinion.

A more complex question might be how to encourage potential education majors from a wider cultural and ethnically diverse population. Do all students see a college education and a career in education as something within reach, something attainable? Or has the high cost of higher education coupled with the toxic public education environment turned potential educators away to other careers or fields of study?

Last night, one of the comments was that diveristy in hiring is not simple; the corporate world is grappling with this issue as well. However, this does not mean we do nothing. I would agree with that.

The incident at Lowell High has brought an ugly undercurrent to light. Looking at what has occurred in the past is a necessity, but the actionable items should not stop there. Looking at school department policies, sensitivity toward an incredibly diverse family population, and diversifying the school staff from top to bottom are all part of this larger conversation and effort.

The meeting packet can be found here.
PARCC Week Day 4: Time Matters

January 29, 2016

If you haven’t yet looked at the PARCC sample tests available, you should (link here). It doesn’t matter what your connection might be to education – parent, teacher, child – take a look. The practice tests are available in both paper-pencil and computer form, but if you can, try out the computer based test (CBT) because that is the direction that high-stakes tests are headed by 2019. And as you work through the practice test, imagine yourself as a student taking these assessments.

The test administrator’s manuals gives some insight into how our students will experience paper-and-pencil version of PARCC this spring. First of all, the tests which are now called units have time limits. This is a big deal and here’s why.

Prior testing using the MCAS assessment was untimed, meaning that a student could work for as long as needed to complete the exam as long as school was in session. The only limit to testing time was that the test had to be turned in at the end of the school day. I was a test administrator for MCAS for the 9 years I taught Grades 3 and 4. My students always needed additional time over the suggestions from MCAS to complete each test. Each year, the students used the time to work carefully.

Students who are designated as English Language Learners and/or have an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or 504 Plan may have additional time to work on tests, just as allowed on the MCAS test. This is clearly outlined in PARCC’s Accommodations Manuals (see Appendix E here). That is good news for those students; however, there are many students without such plans for whom a timed test will not be beneficial.

The majority of my fourth grade students needed 3 1/2 or more hours as they carefully read, reread/reworked passages and problems, checked and transferred answers diligently to bubble (answer) sheets. They worked carefully and diligently to check and re-check questions and answers, going back into texts often to make sure they had made their best answer choice based on evidence from texts or had calculated a mathematical problem correctly. We ask our students to slow down, understand the task, and take apart the text or problem carefully to arrive at an answer. Now they need to hurry up.

Using information posted on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website, click the following link to see the number of “units” and test times for Grades 3 through 8 this year. PARCC Times

This schedule will be challenging for many. The PARCC administration “window” (time schools may schedule the tests) is April 25 – May 27. April 25 is the first Monday after returning from school vacation and unlikely to be a test date. If the scheduled Early Release on May 4 remains, that would probably not be a test date either since the students needing additional time would have their available test time cut short. For this same reason, schools correctly will hesitate to schedule more than one “unit” in a school day. For a classroom teacher, moving ahead with new topics of instruction when ELLs or students on IEPs are still testing and out of the room makes the balance of a test day difficult to plan for. Here’s hoping that temperatures during the four weeks of the test window are not extremely hot.

Even without a move to computer based testing this year, new test times will most likely make an impact on our students. Will students react to this more compact test window or new time limits during standardized testing?
PARCC Week, Day 3: Dangerous Liaisons

January 27, 2016
Who is this Mitchell Chester and why is he so invested in PARCC testing?

Mitchell Chester is the current Commissioner of Education in Massachusetts. Think of that as a district superintendency, but on a state level. He was unanimously selected to be Massachusetts Commissioner of Education in 2008, following a 7-year stint in Ohio as Senior Associate Superintendent for Policy and Accountability in Ohio’s Department of Education. His career path began as an elementary teacher in Connecticut and progressed through various administrative positions at school, district, and state levels. All of which makes for an impressive resume.

However, here is where I think Dr. Chester has gone off the rails: PARCC.

Mitchell Chester currently serves on the PARCC governing board. Up until November 2015 when he was quietly replaced by the Governing Board Member from New Mexico (Hanna Skandera), he was the Chair of this group whose responsibilities include the following, to quote PARCC.org website:

The PARCC consortium Governing Board makes major policy and operational decisions, including decisions related to the overall design of the assessment system, adoption of performance levels for the assessments, and modifications to PARCC’s governance structure and decision-making process, as necessary.

The Commonwealth’s Board of Education was determining whether or not to mandate PARCC as the replacement for MCAS at the same time that Mitchell Chester was seated on the PARCC Governing Board.

Interestingly, Dr. Chester was replaced as Chair of the PARCC Governing Board shortly after Massachusetts declined to use PARCC assessments state-wide.

At the same time Dr. Chester was Chair of the Governing Board at PARCC – the assessment test proposed as the accountability assessment for the Commonwealth. The Pioneer Institute, an independent think tank, outlines reasons that Dr. Chester’s connections to the PARCC Governing Board were problematic in this post from July 2015.

Move forward to November 2015 when the Commonwealth’s Board of Education was to vote on whether or not to commit to PARCC. By this time, it was clear that the public was not in favor of being railroaded into a PARCC commitment. However, miraculously, just as the Board was meeting to make this decision, Dr. Chester was able to come up with a compromise: Massachusetts would create its own assessment to replace MCAS. The new assessment would be called MCAS 2.0 and would be a hybrid of PARCC and MCAS.

Gradually over the next weeks, the independence of MCAS 2.0 from PARCC was whittled away. At first, the new assessment would only have the look and feel of PARCC; the new hybrid assessment would be developed just for Massachusetts. Next came the news that PARCC decided states could purchases/contract some of the PARCC test if the whole was not desired. The decision to allow a la carte test items suspiciously coincided with Massachusetts’ rejection of PARCC as their state-wide assessment.

Questions remain concerning the percentage of PARCC test items to be inserted into PARCC, but I have read percentages ranging from 70% to 90% PARCC. Could MCAS 2.0 just be PARCC with a new name?

For the life of me, I cannot understand how this is not called out as a blatant conflict of interest. While Dr. Chester’s boss, Governor Baker, doesn’t seem to think there is a problem (see WBUR interview and report), the Commissioner’s connections to the PARCC Governing Board seem just a little too cozy.

Here are some weblinks for further reading:
PARCC Week, Part 2: Pearson

January 26, 2016

If you’re inside Education, you’ve probably got a good idea or at least name recognition for Pearson Education. And if not, well to paraphrase Lowell’s own Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Pearson is a prime example of the corporate take-over culture that infects business today. Corporate giants adhere to a business model in which companies bid and buy smaller companies or competitors, mostly to get an already successful product developed by the second company. In lieu of development, one enterprise simply raids the pantry of another company, usually keeping the piece that they want to profit from and getting rid of most everything else.

Pearson has raided many of the educational publishing houses such as Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Heinemann, Scott Foresman, and Ginn. Sadly now that Pearson owns them, many have ceased to exist as independent imprints.

Once Pearson obtained the lion’s share of the textbook publishing market, they moved on to the next great profit center: assessments. Pearson owns and manages the rights to several assessments that should be familiar territory to educators, such as DRA2 . Not surprising, Pearson has the rights to PARCC. Pearson was the successful bidder to the multi-year multi-million-dollar PARCC test. PARCC Inc. or PARCC Org. – Pearson has their hand in both.

When the PARCC Consortium, the group banding together to use PARCC as the required standardized assessment, began, there were 26 states committed to using this test. As State Departments of Educations got a good look at test administration, the costs, the technology requirements, and experienced the delays in score reporting, many dropped out of the PARCC Consortium. At this writing, there are SIX remaining commited to administering PARCC (Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, plus D.C). Whether this is a factor or not, layoffs were announced this past week at Pearson.

Not to worry! States can also contract for parts of the PARCC test. Offering individual test items or parts of subtests seems to be a recent development to respond to states who are, shall we say, “uncomfortable” with the PARCC test in its entirety. States like Louisiana and now Massachusetts, have floated the idea that their replacement hybrid assessment, named MCAS 2.0 in Massachusetts, may contain a significant proportion of PARCC test items.

Pearson may be disappointed that the gravy train is not stopping at their corporate headquarters. However, it appears that they will manage to make a profit on PARCC one way or another.

Link to next post here.
PARCC Week, Day 1: Intro to Standardized Testing

January 23, 2016

As I sat down to write about my personal opinions about PARCC and standardized testing in general, I came to the realization that a single post might not be enough. Over the course of the next week, I’ll be posting about PARCC and some of the reasons it merits the attention of anyone connected to students – parents, teachers, and community members. This is the first entry of this series.

This week our local School Committee voted to change the Spring 2016 assessment tool from the previously approved (October 2015) Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) to Parternship for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC). The deed is done, but that doesn’t mean it has to stand forever.

As a third-grade and fourth-grade teacher for the last 9 years before I retired in June, I had quite a bit of experience with MCAS. My students were never part of the PARCC pilot, or try-out tests, but I have taken a good, long look at what PARCC releases on their website (parcc.org). I reviewed test items as part of my personal work as educator as well as when I was a part of the team re-writing math curriculum to align with Common Core Standards.

Preparing students who are barely 9 years old for hours-long testing involves teaching test taking strategies. This does not mean teaching to the test. It means basic skills such as teaching students to scan questions prior to reading a passage, reading the italicized introduction to a reading passage, highlighting using allowable tools, staying within boundaries of open response question/answer areas, erasing bubble sheets, and making only one answer choice, ensuring that the whole test has been answered and no items left skipped, reading test items and dealing with tricky and subtle changes in wording, and it means preparing to focus and concentrate for long periods of time. Some may think that those listed strategies should be assumed; I would remind you of that old saying: ” when you assume….”. None of this is second nature to a 9-year-old.

Each year that I administered MCAS, I kept a notecard inside one of my desk drawers. On that card, I noted some factors of a students’ life that might negatively impact test performance. Why? Because invariably when the results of testing were released, teachers are rightly asked to look closely at the results and make instructional decisions to improve. And now, in a more toxic environment, those test scores can become part of an evaluation of my teaching.

I don’t think my instruction was perfect and there are/were plenty of standards on which I could have done a more effective job. My notes, however, contained items such as “no glasses, broken and not replaced”, “arrived 2 hours after test began” and “upset and crying due to fight at home”. This is the reality of teaching in schools where trauma is high. To disregard the impact of such things on a child tasked with performing on a one-shot high-stakes test is foolish.

I dislike and distrust most high stakes testing. My English Language Learners (ELLs) – some years that population made up 75% of the classroom – are smart and funny and wonderful learners who easily misunderstood some of the subtleties of test language. They’ll make sense of these tests and learn to deal with them, of course, but it will take more than a few years. Yet the Commonwealth punishes them by designating their test scores “needs improvement” or “warning”. What must that do to a child’s psyche? My students were always more than a number to me, but the Commonwealth doesn’t see it that way.

So through the lense of someone who has been in the room during testing, who has witnessed extraordinary effort of students to try to show their best performance on a snap-shot of their learning, over the next several posts, I will try to explain what it is that makes me even more apprehensive about this new assessment, the PARCC tests.

Next topic: The Corporate Connection