Have your heard about the PARCC Assessments?  The Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers is a collection of 22 states that will be producing a series of Common Core aligned exams.  The PARCC Assessments are scheduled to begin in the 2014-15 school year.

PARCC exam types

Promotion for the PARCC consortium has begun just as states are starting to jump ship. Ideological and financial reasons will certainly play a role in some of the states who abandon PARCC. Educational issues surrounding the PARCC exams and their impact on our children and their learning environment should be the primary concern and has not received much attention.

Infrastructure and School Impact

from PARCC ASSESSMENT ADMINISTRATION GUIDANCE VERSION 1.0 MARCH 2013  

http://www.parcconline.org/assessment-administration-guidance

the minimum number of devices that a school will need to administer the assessments within 20 and the recommended number of devices, which is the number needed to administer the assessments in fewer than 20 days.

My middle school (grades 6-8) has approximately 300 students per level. From talking to educators in my area we are somewhat ahead of the average district in technology. We have two labs with 30 computers each and our library has around 20. Counting 3 classrooms with banks of 5 computers each we have close to 100 desktop computers available for large scale testing.  We have WIFI, but how many schools do currently? PARCC mentions “devices” which I assume throws tablets into the mix, but would taking an exam on a iPad be a good idea?  Typing and clicking on a tablet is not the most accurate or easy task.  WIFI capacity, reliability, and connectivity are significant issues for any portable devices as well.  I wonder if compatibility of devices and computers has been discussed.  Every time we do a Windows OS update problems ensue across our varied technology. PARCC can publish technology guides all it wants, but the reality on the front lines of education will be varied and problematic.

PARCC recommends the number of devices available to be the same as the largest grade level in a school, so we would need to triple our computer count to meet that demand or increase our count by a third to meet the minimum standard. If we were to increase our number of desktop computers, where would we put them?  Classroom space is at a premium as it is.  What about other schools who are behind?

Scheduling grade levels and classes to move through computer labs and libraries for PARCC testing will be maddening.  The library is often the central hub of activity in a school. Based on the time-frames of PARCC testing the library will be shut down to real learning and exploration for many weeks.  One would have to wonder if the few schools who have full-time librarians would loose those valuable staff members if districts look at the amount of time the library would be closed to classes.

Some states are already conducting online assessments, while others are still making the investments in infrastructure and devices. Of course the technology that schools invest in for use during the PARCC assessments will be a valuable instructional resource for teachers and students throughout the school year.  – PARCC CostsFAQs07-22-13

The PARCC public relations team is trying to justify the huge costs of upgrading technology to administer the new assessments.  The idea that most schools would have the luxury to drastically improve their tech infrastructure in a era of tight budgets is laughable. Teachers and programs are being cut, yet we are spending billions to build computer delivered assessments. Jim Horn gives us a nice look at the true cost of PARCC and what the funding could really purchase.  To try and justify the use of technology as being available for learning is a bitter irony as students will be prevented access to computers with PARCC and other mandated testing and data collections locking down access.

Of course these issues have little relevance to those far removed from our schools who make these policies. I really foresee an impending disaster and part of me would love to witness this entire plan come crashing down as schools across the multiple states log on to PARCC exams.  So many aspects of online computer testing at the local and nationwide level will bring major administrative problems to our schools.

Student Impact

The estimated time for a “typical student” shows the most significant problem for our children.  The time spend on PARCC testing rivals professional certification exams.  Eight year-olds will be subjected to eight hours of testing just from the PARCC.  Our children will be facing an unprecedented amount of time on assessment exams when you add in other mandated testing such as benchmarks, RTI, achievement, and teacher evaluation.  How much real learning and exploration time will be lost?

from PARCC ASSESSMENT ADMINISTRATION GUIDANCE VERSION 1.0

A “typical student” is modeled for time on testing by PARCC.  What about students who receive accommodations for extended time?  Experienced teachers find a large of number of students are slow to type on computers despite the amount of technology in their lives. What about students who have limited exposure to computers? Are they placed at a disadvantage? Some students could be faced with double the amount of testing time allotted. Will students get frustrated? Type short responses? Give up?

Another concern is reading, typing, and editing on a computer.  Some people prefer to do their work on paper as opposed to computers.   Does PARCC account for diverse learning styles and abilities?

Student entry area for writing portion.

PARCC’s written questions will be entered into a form familiar to many bloggers.  Surely students will experience freeze ups, premature submissions, and lost work that can happen with computers.  Software and network failures can throw testing procedures into chaos as well.

Another interesting issue is how test proctors will handle student proximity during testing in computer labs.  What does a student do when complete with the test?  Can computers be locked down so students cannot access other programs? A multitude of administrative problems await.

Now that PARCC has released the costs of its assessments the next few months should be interesting as political, educational, and financial arguments will be made about the merits of PARCC testing.  Even New York Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is downplaying adopting PARCC  after a year of Common Core and teacher evaluation problems in the Empire State.  The bottom line is that the PARCC assessments will harm our schools educationally and financially and we need to end this madness.

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