Harford middle, high school students beat state average scores on PARCC

This was the first and last time Mississippi will be giving the PARCC assessment, which tested students on Common Core standards.

Fallston Middle School had Harford’s highest percentage of students meeting or exceeding the Algebra I requirements, 91.4 percent.

She heard a few students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School wanted to “stage a protest” and not show up to take the test.

“If students do well in the math curriculum, they should be better prepared for the PARCC assessments”, he said. State Superintendent Carey Wright says standards on Mississippi’s old tests were too low. For Algebra 1, that proficiency level was almost 39 percent, and for Algebra 2 it was about 31 percent.

While the majority of high school juniors scored high enough in English, only 53 percent of students from all grade levels met the target score in algebra II and 44 percent in geometry.

Hundreds of high school students and supporters participated in 2014 March to Close the Gap in Montgomery County schools.

At least 21.4 percent at Bel Air High School had top Algebra I scores, and at least 29.6 percent in Algebra II. The PARCC test is given in 10 total states across the country.

This was the first and last time Mississippi used the PARCC test. The same college and career ready standards that have been used over the last several years will continue to be taught, but the state will begin administering the Mississippi Assessment Program (MAP) instead of PARCC this school year and will continue for the next several years.

The results show most South Mississippi students outperformed their peers in other parts of the state.

“Now that [the administration] has set PARCC cut scores, we estimate about 35,000-40,000 seniors will not be able to use PARCC to graduate and will have to find another “option” to get a diploma”, said Stan Karp of the Education Law Center, the Newark-based advocacy group. Six percent of county students – or 417 students – scored Level 5 on the English test.

School officials said it paid off across the board and for students from all ethnic and economic backgrounds.

“I’m proud of the hard work our teachers and administrators have put in leading up to the new test”, he said.

“It takes a while for this data to be valid, because we have no previous scores to compare”, Pineiro said.

Dillon said the good scores are the result of years of diligence.

Results for each student who took a PARCC test in the spring will be mailed to parents and guardians in December, at which point O’Neill said the BOE and MCPS expect to hear more questions about what the tests mean.

In Mississippi, those standards have morphed into the current Mississippi College and Career-Ready Standards.

The New Jersey Board of Education on Wednesday set scores that students must achieve to be considered at or above grade-level in math or English language arts, but they’re not necessarily the scores students will need to graduate high school.

For the next four years, students can meet graduation requirements through PARCC or a variety of other tests, including the SAT and ACT, as well as the portfolio process.

The gaps in performance between students of different races was similar on the Algebra 2 and English 10 exams. Wright and state assessment director J.P. Beaudoin said even though Mississippi won’t give the PARCC again, they want teachers to use the results to help identify strengths and weaknesses of individual students to help them improve.