Former US President Calvin Coolidge once said, “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” It’s one of the quotes I’ve selected for our new front page, to be launched soon.
Calvin Coolidge of Vermont, our 30th president (1923-1929)
President Coolidge’s politics were different from those of Maryland today: he was a small-government conservative and a Republican. He was a man of few words, but this short sentence embodies his small-government philosophy. It is urgent that we act, that we do something about certain situations in our public schools, but it is physically impossible to try to do everything at once.
I selected these words of wisdom because I see them as a sort of motto for teachers in Maryland—and probably in many states—who face the somewhat daunting task of making several adjustments to their daily routines at the same time. They are, in most schools, being asked to become proficient in the learning standards known as the Common Core, prepare students for what are still-unpublished tests, grapple with declining standardized test scores on the old tests, and keep their own evaluation scores high, even as teacher evaluation systems, which have had limited trial and error periods, are implemented.
The transition to a new set of learning standards without an accompanying change to Maryland’s standardized test, which is the main cause of the state’s first drop in scores on those tests in at least a decade, also creates problems for the state’s students. Standardized tests affect a student’s ability to get into signature programs or magnet high schools. They aren’t the only factor considered in decisions like this, but they do contribute to a student’s placement in certain programs, depending on the district.
“The misalignment of tests and curriculum could have a huge impact on students,” the Baltimore Sun’s Liz Bowie quoted Baltimore County school Superintendent S Dallas Dance as saying in an email. “If we are not testing students on the curriculum being taught throughout the year, it is difficult to accurately assess what they comprehend and the areas in which they might need additional support. … In terms of determining placement in specialty programs, assessment scores are only one part of the data used, but they are considered and therefore have some effect.”
So, what is Maryland doing about this problem of misalignment between what is taught in the state’s classrooms and the standardized tests the state gives students?
For one thing, the state is on board with tests in reading and math being developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Groups of students at Maryland schools will try out the new PARCC assessments in a “field test” this spring. A field test is required before the test counts, because not every item written by adults will work with kids. In order to find out which test questions are good and which ones simply don’t work with kids, the test developers at PARCC actually need to try out the questions.
The questions that pass muster will be incorporated into operational assessments to be given to students in PARCC states during the 2014-15 school year. That means Maryland students have at least one more year left of the misaligned MSAs, assuming everything goes according to plan with the PARCC assessments.
And it probably will go according to plan in Maryland and at least a handful of other states. However, the multi-state testing consortium, which started out with 22 states, is now down to 14 plus the District of Columbia, and according to a conference call PARCC had with reporters today, other states may drop off the list as well. They’re looking mainly at the financial realities of the tests, which were released last week, and the bandwidth required for the new tests, bandwidth many states say their schools don’t have. Even with some defections, though, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Tennessee have joined Maryland in committing to PARCC for now.
