St. Charles school board talks PARCC validity
A deeper dive into Common Core test results unveiled some puzzling student scores in St. Charles Monday. But rather than trigger alarm about student achievement, school board members expressed more doubts about the validity of the exams.
Students in third through eighth grades who achieved language arts scores indicating college or career readiness plummeted from last year. About 66 percent of students who took the PARCC exam last year met or exceeded that goal. In the most recent testing, only 53 percent of students qualified as meets or exceeds. The state average was 36 percent of students meeting or exceeding.
In math, St. Charles students' scores stayed flat. About 54 percent of students achieved scores that met or exceeded the standard indicating college or career readiness in both 2015 and 2016 testing. The state average was 32 percent of students meeting or exceeding the math standard.
While both the language arts and math scores for both years tallied well above state averages, the results are not what St. Charles school officials saw from their students in tests from years past. Yet, in perspective, St. Charles was not alone in that regard.
Only two of the 10 school districts St. Charles uses as benchmarks saw language arts scores rise from the first year of PARCC testing to the next. Only one benchmark district saw a decline in math scores.
David Chiszar, St. Charles' executive director of assessment and accountability, said the disparity between language arts achievement and math achievement is clear. What isn't clear is the reason for it.
Chiszar said the district shifted all students away from paper and pencil exams over to the computer versions in the most recent PARCC testing. That may have fueled some of the test score decline. The exam itself was also a bit different from last year.
“I don't think it was a student issue,” Chiszar said. “It's difficult to say that, if a student went from one year to the next and dropped or gained that that tells us something.”
School board member Ed McNally told fellow board member Kathy Hewell and his other board colleagues that the results show the PARCC exam is a poor measure of student knowledge and a poor tool to judge curriculum.
“I have expressed since PARCC started that I was concerned with the validity of the test,” McNally said.
“And you were right,” Hewell replied.
“You didn't need a crystal ball to see it coming,” McNally said. “I'm not so much concerned about the results because I never put much into this test. I trust our people more than I trust the people in Springfield.”
District officials continued to speculate that this school year will be the swan song for PARCC testing. It's not yet clear what might replace it. However, high school students will already switch to the SAT exam for the first time this year.