You may be hearing about an upcoming change in the type of annual assessment students will be taking throughout the country – including in New Mexico’s schools.
It’s called the PARCC assessment and, for our state, it will be taking the place of the Standards Based Assessment in English Language Arts and math.
An annual exam is mandated by federal law, as well as state law, and has been a part of public education in our country for many, many years.
We’ve worked to reduce required testing time in our schools over the past four years, and we will continue our work with schools and districts to prepare for the transition to this new assessment.
Here are some answers to a few key questions:
Q: Why do students take an annual assessment?
A : In all 50 states, the answer is the same: Tests are an essential part of school and life, and they provide an important look at how students are growing and learning, as well as how they perform relative to their peers in other counties or states. They help us understand where we need to work harder and where we excel.
Federal and state-mandated annual assessments like PARCC, or the SBA, have served for decades as tools to provide that critical lens into our students’ academic progress – so we can understand whether a student has truly mastered the material and is ready to move on, and where additional support may be needed.
Q: So why PARCC? Is it a better test? Is testing time going up or down?
A : The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, is a new kind of assessment and is the result of work by more than 2,000 teachers and experts from all over the country, including New Mexico. Their goal was to develop a better test that requires students to think critically and apply what they’ve learned – as opposed to just regurgitating memorized facts.
PARCC also takes the necessary step of raising expectations. Every year, New Mexico spends more than $20 million on courses for nearly 50 percent of our college-bound graduates who have been accepted to college but need remediation. Until we raise the bar, we cannot claim that a high school diploma means our students are truly ready for college, for a career or for success in life.
PARCC is the first required statewide assessment to be given online, taking advantage of a much more interactive interface for our students. Instead of filling in bubbles, students will read passages, write essays and solve real-world problems.
I share our families’ concerns about time spent testing. Over the past several years, we have worked hard with our district leaders to reduce required state and federal testing time for students by two-and-a-half hours across all grade levels. This means total testing time on state and federally required tests has gone down, not up, over the past four years and is less than two percent of all time spent in the classroom over the course of a school year.
Q: What should we expect?
A : I understand that change can be difficult and, with anything new, there will always be a period of adjustment. PARCC has significant advantages over previous fill-in-the-bubble exams, but it is a new format for our students and schools this year. Our schools and districts have put in a tremendous effort over the past several years to prepare for PARCC, and the state has invested more than $15 million in technology upgrades and professional development for our teachers.
Additionally, because PARCC is a more rigorous assessment, we should be aware that scores may temporarily dip. We know this does not mean our students aren’t as smart or that our teachers aren’t as effective.
In fact, because of this, graduation requirements for students, teacher evaluations and school grades all have a multiyear built-in transition period to adjust.
Q: What can you do?
A : Support your teachers and students.
PARCC is not just more rigorous, it’s also a big change – and nothing new is perfect. There are bound to be glitches.
But our goal should always be to provide our students with a more accurate assessment of where they stand, in less time, with more useful results. With PARCC, we do all three and take a significant step toward making New Mexico’s schools better for our kids.