Last Tuesday night, September 15, the Committee voted to approve the following letter to the Board of Education re: high stakes testing.
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In November 2013, the Massachusetts Board of Education
agreed to a two-year trial of the PARCC assessments before a final
determination would be made whether to make PARCC a mandated state assessment.
As the time for a final decision draws near, the Melrose School Committee respectfully
urges the Massachusetts Board of Education to enter into a moratorium on PARCC testing until the following takes place:
1) School districts have more time to work
with Massachusetts State Frameworks for English
and mathematics
2) State funding is available to build the
capacity around technology that PARCC requires
3)
PARCC is evaluated to determine
its true validity and reliability as an assessment system
School districts want to do the best for their students.
Unless the preceding issues of timing,
funding and evaluation are
addressed, school districts should be able to opt out of PARCC without penalty.
More
time needed to incorporate frameworks
With relatively new Massachusetts State Frameworks in place
for English and mathematics, teachers need more time to make important changes
to their classroom practice so that their instruction and curriculum align with
the standards. When the new Massachusetts State Frameworks for science are
finally released, additional time will be required once again to incorporate
those standards into the curriculum.
The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents
concurs that teachers must have sufficient time to make the necessary
instructional changes to reflect the new frameworks. Until that happens, PARCC
assessments will fail to authentically measure the required student learning
and skills outlined in the Massachusetts State Frameworks.
More
funding needed to build technology capacity
The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s own
data reveals that technology gaps are common across many public schools in
Massachusetts. According DESE’s Office of Digital Learning 2013-2014 Annual
Report, a survey of 212 school districts, found that only:
• 64%
of school districts in Massachusetts have the necessary
infrastructure/bandwidth for next
generation learning.
• 41%
have the recommended devices for the same standard of learning.
As the data shows, technical requirements still continue to
be a substantial stumbling block for full adoption of PARCC for many
Massachusetts school districts that need more time and more funding to build
capacity around technology.
Although school districts received guidance in the form of
meetings, presentations and discussions, no substantial funding has been
offered to help ease the financial burden of meeting PARCC's technical
requirements for test-taking devices and bandwidth.
School districts that have participated in PARCC testing
have witnessed the impact it has had on their budgets. With no technology
grants earmarked in FY16 state budget to support PARCC testing, school
districts will likely underfund critical items in their annual budgets in order
to spend the money needed to make online testing possible.
Melrose
Technology Plan sets five-year goals
A PARCC field test site, Melrose Public Schools requested
that two of its five elementary schools be excluded from the trials because of
inadequate devices and bandwidth. For the other schools in the district that
did participate, extraordinary efforts were made to comply with all technical
requirements.
Melrose Public Schools has struggled to provide the funding
necessary to make technology a vital part of its teaching and learning
environment. In 2015, Melrose Public Schools launched its Technology Planning
Committee—made up of more than 25 educators, technology experts and community
members —to provide strategic direction and action steps related to how
instructional technology will be implemented in the schools.
The resulting Five-Year Strategic Instructional Technology
Plan created a blueprint for upgrading wireless infrastructure, increasing
funding for software subscription licensing and hiring more instructional
technology staff to serve all the district’s schools. The city of Melrose
capital fund will provide funding for the technology improvements but in
increments over five years. The overall effect may be that Melrose Public
Schools will still likely fall short in meeting PARCC’s stringent technology
standards.
In DESE’s report titled Beyond PARCC: The Next Generation,
districts are encouraged to leverage PARCC planning as an opportunity to expand
access to digital tools to drive more instructional outcomes in every
classroom. But the reality is that technology budgets are often underfunded and
must be spent on the most basic technology needs. PARCC exacerbates an already
dire budgeting problem.
More
evaluation needed for PARCC
Changing Massachusetts State Frameworks and gaps in
technology raise doubts about whether PARCC is truly an accurate measure of
student achievement. Parents and educators alike are asking whether students
are subjected to excessive testing under the current system and questioning how
much testing is actually needed to determine individual student progress.
Although the PARCC governing board voted in May to reduce overall testing time
for students, more evaluation is still needed to shed light on PARCC’s validity
and reliability as a tool for assessment.
Melrose Public Schools has worked hard to raise the academic
standards for its students and has diligently built a local system of
assessment, data collection and data analysis based on curriculum and
instruction that is aligned with the Massachusetts State Frameworks. We believe
the practices we have in place adequately reflect the state standards that are
required and the outcomes that are expected.
We recognize the value of standardized student assessments
to improve teaching and learning. At the same time, we understand that
excessive testing takes away from valuable classroom time that can be spent on
teaching and learning. We know well the financial constraints of running a
school district and object to mandates that do not offer financial relief.
Because of these concerns, the Melrose School Committee
recommends that the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
to enter into a moratorium on PARCC
testing until issues of timing, funding and evaluation can be adequately
resolved.