By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
Are you smarter than the fourth grader who answered this PARCC math word problem? Assistant Education Commissioner Bari Erlichson says the state released some 800 questions from this spring’s test cycle. They did this so parents and teachers could not only see exactly what their kids grappled with, but also read notes explaining how their answers were graded.
“The response goes through and shows the valid work or the explanation, so we see the student understands how they arrived at this question. This is a new experience for New Jersey. This is the first time that the state has released a full-length version of our tests, of our test questions and examples of student work,” Erlichson said.
The questions span third through 11th grade, and include samples from math and English. Results from the first round of testing show that less than half of New Jersey students met the tough new performance goals set by the state in either subject. However, now teachers can learn from their students’ responses.
“Having districts unpack PARCC data and look and reflect on curricular strengths and instructional strengths and other gaps is going to be the first piece of this,” Erlichson said.
“This doesn’t give me anything. It’s pretty useless,” said Julie Sass Levin.
Levin, a volunteer with Save Our Schools, says she wants something far more specific.
“As a parent, when my daughter brings a test home, I want to go over the problems she didn’t get right with her. I want to know exactly what her answers were. It’s useless except as test preparation, because it’s giving teachers the ins of how the test is graded,” she said.
Save Our Schools advocated parents to let their kids opt out of taking the PARCC, but students will need passing grades to graduate starting with the class of 2019. The state PTA say studying these questions are critical for teachers tasked with getting students up-to-speed on the Common Core standards that PARCC is designed to test.
“You know, a lot of parents worry about, ‘Is this the right grade level? Is my child being given what’s proper for them on their grade level?’ And I say trust the teacher. If there’s a problem with that the teacher hopefully will say something,” said Rose Acerra, President-elect of the NJ PTA.
“There’s an incredibly limited utility here,” said Dan Katz.
That’s because, Katz, an education testing expert, notes that teachers and students from last year have moved on.
“Those students are now several months into a new school year with a brand new teacher,” he said, “and the teachers themselves spent all of the summer working on developing their curriculum for this year without the benefit of seeing either how their previous students did, or the items.”
“This is not about releasing the test questions in hopes that we’ll have some sort of magical change before the next administration of the test. What we want school districts to undertake is a longterm plan for curricular and instructional improvement,” Erlichson said.
The Department of Education is not done releasing data. At the end of November districts will get individual assessments of student performances on the PARCC. Those will get sent home to mom and dad.