The Maryland State Department of Education issued a document today advising parents in the state what they should know about testing in Maryland. This post is my personal, unsolicited, and non-endorsed response to the seventh “thing” parents should know: “Next year (school year 2014-15), all Maryland students in grades 3-8 will take the PARCC assessments in reading/ELA and math. The PARCC assessments are aligned to Maryland’s College and Career Ready Standards and will measure the essential critical thinking and problem solving skills that students need to be successful in college and careers. The computer-based tests will provide accurate and timely information about what individual students are learning and whether they are on track or need extra help.”
True. Something from PARCC will appear on computer screens across Maryland in the 2014-15 school year. Whether those assessments will be “aligned” to Maryland’s College and Career Ready Standards is yet to be determined.
PARCC will only administer tests in math and English language arts. Most college paths and most career paths require a lot more than that to be “ready.”
Plus, the wording is a little sloppy, presumably for space considerations on the MSDE document itself. Even kids in eighth grade are simply “on track” to being college and career ready.
Finally, the term “college and career ready” has been viewed with considerable skepticism by many, many scholars. The main reviewer of the Common Core’s math standards and the main reviewer of the Common Core’s English language arts standards both refused to sign off on the standards, and a group of 132 Catholic scholars wrote a letter slamming the standards as knowledge and skills that would not prepare students for college.
- Letter by Catholic scholars about the Common Core
- English language arts standards review (Sandra Stotsky)
- Mathematics standards review (James Milgram)
The conclusion, with all these different opinions floating around, may come down to this: What skills and knowledge count as “college-ready” depends on which college we’re talking about. What skills and knowledge count as “career-ready” depends on which career we’re talking about. There’s no way these terms should ever be used in a general sense, as they are in Maryland and by PARCC.
