Massachusetts Leads the Way on New Tests

The usual critics have come forward to warn that the state’s leadership of a consortium that will be developing assessments tied to the Common Core State Standards is the end of MCAS.  This judgment is premature given  newspaper reports that quote state leaders contradicting this conclusion and a strong statement by Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester that “…if the PARCC assessments are not stronger than MCAS, we will not hesitate to walk away.” Further, Massachusetts Secretary of Education, Paul Reville, has released a statement wherein he states that as a matter of state law “There will always be an MCAS”.

MBAE Executive Director, Linda Noonan, was at the American Diploma Project meeting when U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, announced that the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) would receive a $170 million grant to develop the next generation of assessments. PARCC is a consortium of states chaired by Massachusetts Commissioner Mitchell Chester, and led by a governing board of 10 states and the District of Columbia. Florida serves as the “fiscal agent” for the group, which will partner with Achieve, to develop assessments based on the Common Core State Standards.

Two different consortia received awards under the federal governments Race to the Top: Assessments Program. PARCC and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) will create comprehensive testing regimes with testing in grades 3-8 and at least one testing period in high school. While SBAC is engaged in perfecting the end-of-course exam through the use of adaptive computer testing, PARCC is using a combination of end-of-course exams and “through-course” assessments which will provide educators with information on student progress through the year. One of the goals, as expressed in PARCC’s grant application is for “Teachers [to] have an assessment system that provides as much for them as it asks from them.”

Participation in an assessment consortium was one way that states could garner points in the Race to the Top application. In the first round of Race to the Top six different consortia were joined by applicants, with some states participating in all six. Ultimately, only three consortia applied for funding, PARCC, SBAC, and the State Consortium on Board Examination Systems (SCOBES) which was competing for a smaller award which would fund solely high school course assessments.

While the main Race to the Top program stole the headlines and energized a nationwide education reform effort, the assessment competition is a critical part of ensuring that the reforms discussed today have a lasting impact in the future. Massachusetts’ Race to the Top plans envision an expansive and powerful teaching and learning system that will allow teachers to access near real time data on student progress and help better prepare students for life after high school. This effort hinges on having assessments that are integrated into courses, are anchored in college and career readiness goals, and do more than call on students to answer multiple choice questions and fill out bubble sheets.

The MCAS is an important tool for evaluating whether or not students have achieved proficiency in basic skills, but was not meant to serve as a test of college and career readiness, course mastery, or an interim measure of student progress. In it’s 2008 report, Educating a 21st Century Workforce, MBAE called for the creation of college and career benchmarked assessments, as well as a system of end-of-course assessments that would test subject matter mastery. We are hopeful that Massachusetts’ leading role in PARCC will allow Massachusetts to gain partners and funds to develop the next generation of assessments, while maintaining its strong commitment to rigorous standards and assessments.