"What?" I played along. "That I don't have to take them."
Well, of course, he meant PARCC, and as we found out yesterday, nobody has to take them because Ohio has passed legislation that forbids that vendor from providing tests.
In some sense this is good news. So, first, thank you to that kid, and his parents as well as all of the other kids and parents that had the courage to refuse the tests. Thank you to the handful of parent activists here in Elyria who got this thing rolling locally, and continued to provide information and raise hell as the movement spread throughout the county. Thanks as well to those state-wide who played a similar role, those who wrote letters to the editor, contacted legislators, spoke publicly against the intrusive assessment system, or simply educated themselves and others.
Now that we're done patting ourselves on the back, let's look at this for what it is, a small victory. Yes, PARCC is gone, but as I've been saying all along, the American Institutes for Research wrote the Social Studies and Science tests to be PARCC-like (read confusing and inappropriate). Guess who has the inside track to write the new assessments. You guessed it, AIR. So, in all likelihood, the next thing could be just as convoluted and demoralizing as the last thing. Sorry, I don't mean to bring you down.
I know, they've done away with the multiple testing windows. Testing will occur on a single occasion near the end of the year and be shorter in length according to the legislation. Don't get me wrong, the move to one testing window is awesome, a clear win, less intrusive, but how long is the test? The legislation fails to spell out an exact time limit for assessments. Senator Lehner said she hoped to see the testing time cut by half, but this is not in the legislation.
Also, when will they take place? My school year begins in a month and a half. I am developing lessons and setting the pace of my course. Where is my end point? What is the nature of the assessment? How many and what type of questions? You see, my students will have to pass this test in order to graduate. So, while the legislators are patting themselves on the back and heading off to their own summer break, I'm going to prepare to head into yet another school year where my colleagues and I will have very little information regarding the assessments under which we're all being judged.
And as long as I'm being pessimistic about this thing, there is still completely unnecessary testing from 3rd through 8th grade that seems to exist for the sole purpose of grading schools and teachers. These tests have created a culture of assessment, a season (or longer) of anxiety, and despite the new deadlines for feedback on results, will likely still provide absolutely no meaningful information from which to inform instruction. We've been testing like this for better than a decade to bridge the achievement gap and improve college readiness, to leave no child behind. It is not working.
Don't misunderstand me, the developments regarding Ohio's assessment system as passed into law in the budget are a victory. However, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves. This is a beginning. We have collectively created change, but it is a change (while an improvement) to another imperfect, intrusive, and unnecessary high-stakes testing system.
Congratulations? I'm going to the park.
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