We reported about a month ago that Maryland was named fiscal agent for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career after Florida bailed out of its role and most of the money had already been awarded. But when the $96 million contract Maryland would have with PARCC came up for approval by the state’s Board of Public Works, things didn’t exactly go smoothly, MarylandReporter.com reports.
In the description of the contract presented to the Board of Public Works (see page 53 of the agenda, which is on the 55th page of the PDF file, here), PARCC promises, for its part, to develop “national student assessments that provide valid, reliable, and fair assessment of student readiness for college and careers.” This one phrase contains a number of arguments that are probably false but, at the very least, debatable. The tests developed by PARCC, it is claimed, will be:
- National: tests will be given to students nationwide
- Valid: tests measure what they purport to measure in a diverse student population
- Reliable: results are repeatable in multiple trials or with different student samples
- Fair: every student will have equal opportunity to perform well
The word “national” is an unfortunate exaggeration. PARCC has about 18 states, depending on how you count Florida and a few others. The tests will be given to students in “several” states, it should read, not on a national scale.
The use of the word “valid” has been challenged significantly in the scientific literature. It means that the tests will measure student performance on the Common Core standards. I have shown that some standards can’t be measured on a standardized test and can only be measured by more complex tasks. Other analysts have shown that some standards aren’t even worth testing, and so they may be excluded from teachers’ lesson plans. In any event, the tests cannot possibly measure what they purport to measure, unless something changes drastically before kids take them.
The description says the tests will be “reliable,” which is a scientific-sounding term. It basically means you’d get the same results, within a margin of error, no matter how many times students take the test. That either would or would not happen, but either way, the tests are wrong. If they are, in fact, reliable assessment instruments, there’s no need to test every single student in every single year. We can test a random selection of students in random years and get the same results as if we had tested all students in every year. If the tests are, in fact, not reliable, the contract should be declared null and void, because PARCC asserts that they are and Maryland’s acceptance of the contract terms is based, at least in part, on that assertion. But from an educational point of view, as opposed to a legal one, if the tests aren’t reliable instruments, we might as well just assign students a random number that will represent their “score” on the tests and use that number to fire teachers.
It’s impossible to address the issue of “fairness” without more data from the actual tests. Tests in the past, such as the SAT and ACT, have been judged unfair in that kids from affluent backgrounds have more opportunity, such as through parent-paid tutoring programs, to achieve a higher score. Before the PARCC tests are given, I cannot predict what the “fairness” effect will be in terms of boys vs girls, poor vs rich, white vs minority, etc. But other tests don’t make me optimistic about PARCC’s chances for creating “fair” tests.
So, we have four probably false but at least debatable assertions made in one phrase in the contract description. That’s gotta be a record, and I wish I could have brought this up. I wasn’t at the meeting, though. Among the issues brought up there was the fact that the contract thus far has “not one dime for the minority business community,” Arnold Jolivet, president of the Maryland Minority Contractors Association, was quoted as saying.
PARCC’s CEO, Laura McGiffert Slover, who was in attendance, said the multi-state testing consortium would be “very aggressive” in looking for and hiring minority contractors for the $10 million that remains to be awarded. This was in response to Maryland Gov Martin O’Malley’s urging that PARCC “actively recruit” minority vendors.
A little different from most state contracts
Two important points make this contract different from others handled by the state:
- The US Department of Education has the final say, since the source is a federal grant
- Most of the money is simply “passed through” from the feds to the vendors
These points mean there are checks and balances built into the contract. None were given as examples, however. It also means most of the work the contract calls for, accounting for $86 million of the $96 million contract total, is already in progress. For example, Florida already signed up Pearson and ETS to develop test questions for the new PARCC assessments that will be field tested this spring and go operational in the 2014-15 school year.
Maryland’s role as fiscal agent will be to provide four bureaucrats to move the money from the federal Race to the Top grant awarded to PARCC into these vendors’ accounts when officials at the state get the bill. In addition to Pearson and ETS, five other companies have testing roles in the development of the PARCC tests.
“We’re picking up the ball after Florida dropped it,” Mr O’Malley was quoted as saying. He chairs the three-member board that must approve all major state contracts. “We’re doing the president a favor here.”
Lingering technology and computer issues
The last point of concern expressed by the Board of Public Works was the actual delivery of the tests. PARCC wants to deliver most tests via computer, and recent glitches not only in the healthcare websites, Target’s payment system, and springtime testing in other states, also administered by Pearson, could make a reasonable person worry about PARCC’s ability to deliver the tests successfully.
Time will tell, but as we reported last month, Maryland really had little choice but to approve this contract. As Mr O’Malley said, “We feel kind of saddled here by this contract.”
Nationwide controversies over the Common Core and standardized testing have caused a few states to shy away from any more commitment to PARCC. Indeed, several states have already left the consortium and others are thinking about it. One blogger posted news reports from 22 of the 45 states that have adopted the Common Core, including Maryland, where there is “unrest” over the standards and the testing associated with them.
A few Maryland legislators have said they’d like to have a conversation about this when the General Assembly convenes on Jan 8, we reported.
