Recommendation Report on the PARCC Testing System in the Albuquerque Public School

System
Prepared for the Superintendent of APS
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test, or PARCC,
test was formed by a group of ninety-eight teachers and college professors to test all of the
American education system according to the common core standards. For students The PARCC
test is currently being used as a bench mark to gauge academic progress according to the
common core standards. For teachers and schools, the common core is used to gauge the success
of teaching methods and academic progress within the school. The state of New Mexico is one
of thirteen states in the union to incorporate the PARCC test into its school systems. The reasons
for incorporation were both political one due to the no child left behind policy and to the recent
election of Gov. Martinez who pushed for the Common Core school system to be implemented.
UnfortunatelyUnfortunately, this educational system gave slough to a whole lot of problems and
unhappy students, teachers and schools. Even though it is based on the ethos of education
giants such as Pearson, it is my recommendation that APS move away from this destructive and
debilitating system of testing.
Problems with PARCC

The PARCC tests online testing format is very problematic for younger students.
The PARCC test labels improving schools as failures.
The PARCC test discriminates against Special Education and Title 1 students.
The PARCC test puts too much pressure on teachers to teach to the test.

Possible Solutions

Get rid of PARCC by making a government approved State test.

Hold teachers accountable locally.
Create a secondary test for students with learning disabilities.

PARCCs online testing format is very problematic, particularly for younger

students (Save our Schools)

Elementary schools with Computer classes

10%

Have
technology
class
No technology
class

90%

Unlike the SAT and the ACT which are

generally taken written format the PARCC test can be administered on paper or on the computer.
While fitting with the insatiable need for multimodality in todays culture, this online type of
testing is shown to be unproductive and even obstructive to younger PARCC test takers. An
elementary school teacher at APS described the situation saying, Even at third grade we do not
have a tech teacher at our school and to expect them to write an essay its a lot! she said.
But beside the essay there is another more psychological problem with computer testing. While
a screen might keep a child occupied longer than a page of text, the test process is long and
stressful for the younger students. If they lose interest in the computercomputer, the natural
reaction of a child is to start clicking the mouse everywhere answering questions quickly. As a
teacher you cannot control a whole classroom of students clicking to finish the test. The PARCC
test makers refuse to acknowledge these aspects and teachers and schools are still being graded
on these studentsstudents proficiency using the computerized testing methods.
A possible solution to this problem is to make the PARCC test more like the SAT or ACT
in set up where writing the answer to the questions would not be so time consuming and tedious
for the students. Another part of the solution would be to simply go with school created finals as
an objective grading scale for how students are doing.
PARCC Test Cannot Objectively Grade Schools Successfully
One of the biggest complaints from teachers and administrators about the PARCC test is
that it does not recognize success. One of the things that the PARCC test does is set goals for
schools. Normally these goals are purely academic like increasing the number of students in the
school who perform proficiently on some aspect of the PARCC test by a given percentage.
These goals in themselves are a good thing; APS school districts should be held accountable to
improving education for children in Albuquerque New Mexico. However, the problem comes in
when a computer is the one giving the goals and standards. A computer does not have any
intelligence by itself and therefore cannot tell objectively if a school has improved or not. All it
sees is whether the goal was met or not and this presents a huge problem for school systems.
For instanceinstance, suppose that a school has a third grade class that was marked as 65
percent proficient in math for a certain year. In response to this the school was given the task of
having 70 percent of its third grade students proficient in math at a third grade level the next
year. When the results come back from the PARCC test next year the school was found to have
68 percent proficiency rating in mathematics. A computer looks at the improvement and says 68
is not 70 or greater so that school failed at its goal even though the proficiency rating went up

three points. As a result, that improving school would get budget cuts and reduced funding for
not performing up to expectations.

Discrimination: The PARCC Does Not Account Forfor Demographics In The Correct Way.

New Mexico Child Poverty Statistics

31.5
31
30.5
30

Percent of Children below poverty line in New Mexico

29.5
29
28.5
28

2012

2013

2014

2015

New Mexico is known

all over the United States as being one of the poorest states in the USA. In 2014 a survey put out
by the U.S census found that New Mexico was the second poorest in the U.S coming in just in
front of Mississippi. This economic difference cannot be ignored and must be considered when
designing a test. Students in title one schools are especially at risk of their school being counted
as failing as they are at risk more often than students who do not attend Title 1 schools. For
instance, if a high school student attends a Title 1 high school and has to work to support his
family, when is he going to have time to study and prepare for the PARCC test or do homework?
In this way, it could be argued that the PARCC test does discriminate between people of high
income versus people with moderately low to low income ranges.
Another, more serious, category of discrimination in the PARCC testing system is the
special education students and teachers who study at institutions where the PARCC is taken. As
one APS teacher would comment, They are in special education for a reason. They have an IEP
(individualized education program) with all these different modifications that they are supposed

to have in the classroom (Personal interview with APS teacher). The creators of PARCC do not
recognize the help special education students need and force them to take the test judged by what
grade they are aged in.
Lets say that there are some students in special education who are aged to be in the third
grade; however, because of their disabilities, they are only at a first grade learning level. The
PARCC test would take that child and have him take the third grade test. Upon failing the
PARCC for not knowing the information on the test, the teacher of the special education class
would get criticized for his or her ineffectiveness as a teacher and the students would be labeled
as not proficient. This is a blow for the school as one of the five weighted averages for the
schoolsschools overall grade according to the PARCC test is the lowest performing students
score improvement. There is no solution to this other than to let teachers, who actually know
the students in special education classes decide what level of learning that they should be tested
at.
The last and most significant danger that the PARCC test poses is that it puts too much
stress on the teachers to teach to the test and not what is important. As education Philosopher
Bob Stewart said in his blog, The tests drive how and what people teach, and they drive much
of what is created by curriculum developers. (Bob Stewart). The consequences of not teaching
to the test are so severe that some APS schools have been highly suspected to be cheating on the
PARCC tests by teachers working there. If we have created such a high stress environment that
the teachers and principals are willing to cheatcheat, we have created not only a double standard
for our children but also a test badly in need of improvement.
In conclusion, I have found through my research that an attempt to judge schools and
teachers under a standardized test system like PARCC is in short a catastrophic idea. The
PARCC test experiment put out by the common core has not succeeded and needs to be taken
back to the drawing board and revised. I would strongly urge APS officials to have a listening
ear as teachers voice their complaints and worries about the PARCC testing system. The capable
teachers of APS know what academic progress is better than any philosophy or government
organization ever could. I would strongly suggest again that you rethink having students who
attend APS take the PARCC test. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Best Regards
-Ben

Works Cited
Personal Interview with Ali Frumpkin
Personal Interview with Jordan Price
"The Twelve Reasons We Oppose the PARCC Test." Saveourschoolsnj.org. Save Our Schools
NJ, 23 Dec. 2014. Web. 07 Dec. 2016. <http://www.saveourschoolsnj.org/2014/12/23/the-12reasons-we-oppose-the-parcc-test/>.
US Census Bureau, and American Community Survey. "Children in Poverty (100 Percent
Poverty) | KIDS COUNT Data Center." KIDS COUNT Data Center. NA, n.d. Web. 07 Dec.
2016.
Westervelt, Eric. "A Push To Boost Computer Science Learning, Even At An Early Age." NPR.
NPR, 17 Feb. 2014. Web. 07 Dec. 2016.
<http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/17/271151462/a-push-to-boostcomputer-science-learning-even-at-an-early-age>.

Shepard Bob, Why PARCC Testing is Meaningless and Useless, dianeravitch, Date
Published 30 November 2014. Date Accessed 7/12/16.
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/11/30/bob-shepherd-why-parcc-testing-ismeaningless-and-useless/