Correction: The adoption of Common Core State Standards in math and literacy by most states preceded the development of the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams by a smaller coalition of states. This article incorrectly reported the sequence of events.
More than 200,000 Arkansas public school students are poised to take new, state-required exams in math and English-language arts/literacy this month -- and most will do so with a keyboard, screen and mouse.
The first of two testing windows opens Monday for the new exams with the unwieldy name: the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
Called "PARCC exams," most but not all of the tests will be administered by school districts to students on desktop and laptop computers. Only about 15 of Arkansas' 237 school districts and 18 charter-school systems -- including the Little Rock School District -- will give paper-and-pencil versions of the test.
The new tests replace the Arkansas Benchmark and End-of-Course exams. As with those older tests, the results from the new tests are to be used to develop academic improvement plans for individual students and to evaluate overall school performance as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002.
Debbie Jones, the Arkansas Department of Education assistant commissioner for learning services, said the new tests are an improvement over the previous exams, which no longer match the state's education standards nor the classroom lessons that are based on those new standards.
"All of the test questions are aligned with the standards for the first time in years, which is a big relief to teachers," Jones said about the exams that were developed by educators in a multistate coalition. That coalition effort resulted in an unprecedented set of math and literacy standards that have been adopted by more than 40 of the 50 states, including Arkansas in 2010. They are frequently referred to as the Common Core State Standards.
"The sample test questions show that the test will make students think," Jones said. "It's certainly not a test that you can 'teach to the test.' It's not something you can memorize. It tests your knowledge to think, and your knowledge to read and analyze and write well.
"I think it will be a really strong assessment -- when it grows up."
The PARCC exams, however, have an uncertain future in Arkansas. It could be one year and done for the exams, which will cost the state more than $8 million this year. That cost for a mostly online test compares with about $14 million a year for the paper-and-pencil Benchmark and End of Course exams, Jones said.
The Arkansas House of Representatives on Friday voted 86-1 for House Bill 1241 that prohibits the Arkansas Education Board from requiring the use of the PARCC exams or participating in a PARCC-related activity or event after June 30 of this year.
Additionally, the bill -- which still requires approval by the Senate and the governor to become law -- would require the Arkansas Board of Education to "cease participation and its role as a governing state" in the multistate coalition by June 30.
The provisions in the two-page bill would allow the state Department of Education to complete all tasks related to the 2014-15 testing, including scoring and reporting the results.
That scoring and reporting is not expected to be completed until late next fall. That length of time is necessary to allow for "standards-setting," or identifying what scores are considered an advanced achievement level of student work, and what is considered proficient achievement, basic achievement and below-basic achievement. Once those standards are set, scoring and reporting results could be done faster in subsequent years.
Karen Lamoreaux is a parent of school-age children, a radio talk-show host and a leader in a statewide Arkansas Against Common Core organization that opposes the PARCC math and literacy exams for several reasons.
"This test is not validated," a happy Lamoreaux said Friday after the House vote. "There is really no way to tell whether it is going to do what it says it will do or not," she said, adding that she believes there are other tests available that are more proven to be aligned with the Common Core State Standards.
She called the tests "cognitively inappropriate." The difficulty of the test questions is "often significantly above" the grade level of the children being tested, she said.
"This also makes it difficult to really assess what a child knows because the reading levels don't line up with the grade levels of the students."
State and school district leaders have been working for more than a year to ensure that school employees are trained and that schools have adequate numbers of computers to support all of the student testing within the prescribed windows of time for the tests. Field testing of the exam, webinar training and infrastructure trials have been part of those efforts since last year.
But Lamoreaux said the online testing system will prove to be "glitchy and technologically fallible." She said the testing company has had some problems with the electronic delivery of the exams to the participating states. Arkansas schools, which are starting the testing later than some of the other states in the coalition, can expect to have their own challenges in terms of adequate computers and Internet support to handle the test-taking, she said.
And Lamoreaux said one of the advantages of participating in a multistate test -- the ability to compare student performance across state lines -- has been diminished by the fact that the number of states participating in the PARCC exams has dropped from nearly two dozen states to just nine.
Of the nine, Ohio, Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey began giving the online exams over the past two weeks -- in advance of Arkansas. As of Friday afternoon, more than 1 million online performance-based exams in math and literacy had been given, according to the partnership organization that is tracking the administration of the tests, any problems and the amount of time it takes to resolve the problems.
The PARCC exams will be given to students in third through 11th grades in English-language arts/literacy, and in third through eighth grades in math, algebra I, geometry and algebra II. The 11th-grade literacy and algebra II tests are optional for districts to give students.
The new testing consists of two parts. Schools will give the PARCC performance-based exams in math and literacy within the next four weeks. Those tests will include reading and writing exercises, as well as math problem-solving. For a third-grader, the testing will take about eight hours over the course of two or more days.
Then, shorter PARCC end-of-year exams in math and literacy will be given by schools at some point between April 27 and May 22. The end-of-year tests will feature easier-to-grade, multiple-choice-type questions. For a third-grader, this test will take less than five hours to complete. The results from both test sessions will make up a student's scores.
Jones said Arkansas needs a student-testing system like PARCC that is not only aligned with the standards but also provides accurate data on student performance in Arkansas as compared with other states. That comparison was not available with the Benchmark and End of Course exams, she said.
The testing system also must help gauge whether students are ready for college and careers, Jones said, and the system must provide teachers with data about their students so the teachers can better develop classroom lessons and instruction.
"If we lose the PARCC exams but we can have those elements, we will be fine," said Jones, who attributed the objections to the PARCC exams in part to the fact that it is a change. She also said any new system will have problems or bugs that will have to be resolved.
School district leaders and teachers said last week that they hope the new testing program will be a success.
Tianka Sheard, the math facilitator at Little Rock School District's Wilson Elementary School, said the transition to the new standards and the new exams have been difficult for pupils and faculty members at her school.
Wilson Elementary is a former state-labeled "priority" school, meaning it had some of the lowest student scores in the state. More recently, however, it has been recognized by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville's Office for Education Policy for student achievement gains in math and literacy over five years.
"Common Core Standards are more focused on reasoning," Sheard said. "In the past, teaching has been geared toward helping students find the path to the correct answer. Now it's about facilitating students' reasoning a path on their own to the correct answer, and there may be more than one path. It's hard-wired into teachers to help kids get the right answer. But the shift is now to allow the students to struggle through and make sense of the process. That's been very challenging for teachers and students."
The Little Rock district is giving a paper version of the test because it doesn't have enough computers to test all of the students within the specified period. The format of questions on the new test versus the old tests is significantly different, Sheard said. The new test asks students to select not just one answer per question but all of the answers that are correct. There may be multiple correct answers or none at all.
"I do think the switch to the Common Core Standards is what is needed for our kids to be prepared for a global society," Sheard said. "I'm not sure the PARCC test is the best move right now, but it will give a measure that we can shoot for."
Laura Bednar, deputy superintendent and chief academic officer in the Pulaski County Special School District, said Friday that new standards and tests are more challenging by design.
"If we are truly preparing students for life after high school, for college and careers, what do students need to be successful? I think we all agreed that our standards and tests were not rigorous enough," Bednar said.
She said she was disappointed with the legislative vote on ending the use of the new exams after this school year.
"My hope is that people will have the opportunity to discuss their concerns relative to PARCC and all of the transitions, and they will see that it is the best move for students," she said. "Ultimately, I hope we will keep what we now have and work to make it better. "
Wayne Fawcett, superintendent of the 1,100-student Paris School District, said there is the "usual trepidation" in his district about a new test, but "we feel like we prepared as much as we possibly could."
The district features a 1-to-1 student-to-computing-device ratio.
He said he is pleased to have a testing system that is based on the new education standards, which have been put in place over the past four years in Arkansas school districts.
"We are anxious to see what the results will show," Fawcett said. "Research shows that there is an implementation dip [in scores] when you change from one assessment system to another. We anticipate that. We are looking forward to getting those results, and see how we are doing relative to the Common Core State Standards. We can take that, assess those results, improve our instruction and move forward."
He said all Arkansas school district leaders will give their input to the state leaders about the testing program after it is completed this year. The system could need to be tweaked or completely overhauled, he said.
"It may go better than we expect, and everyone may be happy with it. It probably will be all over the board."
Metro on 03/08/2015