Governor orders end to PARCC testing (NM testing of student achievement)

The Albuquerque Journal ^ | January 3, 2019 | Dan Boyd And Shelby Perea

[CedarDave]

SANTA FE – On her third day as governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that New Mexico will drop the oft-maligned PARCC exam after the current school year – if not sooner.

In its place, a new state-specific assessment system will be created, Lujan Grisham said. Although it’s unclear exactly what the replacement will look like, the new Democratic governor said she’s confident it can be in place by August and will meet federal requirements.

“I know that PARCC isn’t working,” Lujan Grisham said after announcing two executive orders during a news conference at the state Capitol. “We know that around the country.”

The governor, who was joined by four teachers at Thursday’s news conference, also said families and students around the state should “expect to see New Mexico transition immediately out of high-stakes testing.”

Lujan Grisham had vowed on the campaign trail to eliminate PARCC testing in New Mexico if elected, and described it Thursday as a punitive system that has pushed educators to focus on test-taking preparation, not on teaching.

[CedarDave]

In addition to evaluating students, PARCC, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, test scores were used as a factor in identifying low-performing schools for potential closure and in teacher evaluations. Therefore teachers, of course, hated the test as it could threaten their jobs.

One thing the previous Republican administration tried to accomplish was to eliminate social promotion, especially from grade 3 to grade 4. However, teachers and the legislature continually fought against it and kids were promoted regardless of their proficiency in necessary skills. Social promotion remains a pathway to failure in later grades and in the future workplace.

[CedarDave]

Of course, in case you're wondering, the new Gov is a progressive liberal Democrat.

NM list PING!

I may not PING for all New Mexico articles. To see New Mexico articles by topic click here: New Mexico Topics

To see NM articles by keyword, click here: New Mexico Keywords

To see the NM Message Page, click here: New Mexico Messages

(The NM list is available on my FR homepage for FR member use; its use in the News Forum should not be for trivial or inconsequential posts. Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
(For ABQ Journal articles requiring a subscription, scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the article for free after answering a question or watching a short video commercial.)

[Reno89519]

The old test might have been flawed and resulted in showing students doing poorly. More likely due to the teachers and schools rather than the test itself. The new test, probably to see if they can spell their name correctly, their school name, city name, and state name. Open book, of course.

[grania]

They should go back to basic skills testing, like the Iowa tests used to be. Then, instead of wasting time and money on high stakes tests, students with basic skills and not much talent or inclination to become rocket scientests could learn a vocational skill. They’ll probably learn more high-order thinking skills from that than they do staring at an Algebra 2 book for a year.

[CedarDave]

Due to NM’s chronic poverty rate and students lack of English skills, many schools are little more than daycare centers. There are exceptions where there are high paying jobs for parents like Los Alamos and also out in the oil patch like Hobbs where one elementary school this year won an award for academic achievement (received National Blue Ribbon School award from the U.S. Department of Education).

[dgbrown]

I did 9 years on a school board in a small town(k-9). The state had 3 tests throughout the students’ time k-9. Teachers taught to the standards, which are not a bad thing! The info the school gets back from the test are actually quite good— if 90% of your 7th graders don’t know how to use a comma, the test will tell you.

For my whole tenure on the board they were still “figuring out” what the standards should be and who’s they should follow, which tests... there was no continuity. You really couldn’t say if you were getting better or not because the goalpost kept moving. End of the day it didn’t matter because the size of the school was too small so the results were not statistically valid.

[hanamizu]

to eliminate social promotion, especially from grade 3 to grade 4.

---

The step from 3rd to 4th is a big one. Twenty-fire years ago or so here in Missouri, there was a big legislative battle over school funding. The legislature was about to adjourn and in the last two or three days of the session, a huge education bill was cobbled together. Like ObamaCare, no one actually had read the bill since it was many hundreds of pages long.

Well, one legislator had put in a provision that no one who wasn’t reading at the third-grade level could be promoted to forth grade. It wasn’t until the summer that this little tidbit was discovered. For those of you who don’t know, schools are lucky if half of their third-graders are reading at grade level, and there are loads of schools where virtually none of them are. People started imagining schools with four third grade classes for each fourth grade class. In a few years, it would only get worse with 13 year-old third graders sitting next to 8 year olds.

So naturally, the provision was quickly repealed when the legislature came back into session.

[CurlyDave]

...Lujan Grisham had vowed on the campaign trail to eliminate PARCC testing in New Mexico if elected, and described it Thursday as a punitive system that has pushed educators to focus on test-taking preparation, not on teaching...

My experience is that people who view life as a series of tests do pretty well. Those who do not want to be tested, just drift with whatever happens to them and seldom achieve much success.

[sphinx]

Any standardized test will run headlong into demographic realities that are taboo to mention. In a nutshell, that is the driving issue in the war over testing.

[Gay State Conservative]

When Rats shut down achievement tests like that it's *always* because they somehow don't make “people of color” look good.