East Longmeadow students in grades 3 through 8 to take PARCC exam this year

Date: 9/18/2014

EAST LONGMEADOW – At its Sept. 8 meeting, the School Committee voted 4 to 1 in favor of adopting the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC) paper and pencil model assessment for grades 3 through 8 for the 2014-2015 school year.

The School Committee discussed the possibility of adopting PARCC for grades 3 through 5 at its Aug. 11 meeting, but tabled the discussion in order to share the idea with the East Longmeadow School District Leadership Team.

“I did talk to the Leadership Team and they still felt that the recommendation should be [grades] 3 through 8 taking the paper and pencil PARCC for this year,” Superintendent of Schools Gordon Smith said.

School Committee member Elizabeth Marsian-Boucher, who voted against PARCC said, in her opinion, Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) is more proven than PARCC.

“They have 10,000 questions that they have yet to assess from last year’s practice to create the exam for the spring for PARCC,” she said.

This vote means students in grades 3 through 8 will not take the MCAS exam for the 2014 through 2015 school year, Smith said.

Students in grades 9 and 10 will take the MCAS this year as a graduation requirement, which will remain in effect until after the graduating class of 2018.

“PARCC is different from the MCAS in that it has students complete a performance-based assessment with a test administration window of March 23 to April 3,” he said. “And there is an end of the year assessment with a test administration window of May 11 to May 22.”

A PARCC pilot was implemented during the 2013-2014 school year for a limited number of students in the school district from grades 5 through 11, which featured both computer based and pencil and paper assessments.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has not shared the results of all PARCC pilot assessments throughout the Commonwealth; however, after this school year is finished, PARCC data from individual students, individual schools, and school districts will be shared, Smith said.

The DESE will determine whether it will adopt PARCC, which aligns with the Common Core State Standards, in October 2015.

Regardless of the decision, Smith said new testing is coming.

“I don’t debate that there will be a new generation of assessment, that’s where we’re going,” he said. “I think we’ll be prepared regardless of whether it’s PARCC or some other type of new generation assessment because what we’re doing is the background work of making sure our curriculum is aligned to the new state standards.”

Smith said the school district is helping students get ready for the next generation of state assessments by providing online assessments on a weekly and monthly basis.

For the English language arts, students typically read several excerpts of differing opinions, which allows students to develop their own opinion through a writing response, he said.

“Our job is not so much to teach to a test, as to make sure our students are proficient and hopefully even more proficient in mastering the standards,” he said.