MA education chief calls for new hybrid test

This legislation S-2881, was in response to media reports indicating that the state Education Commissioner Hespe suggested withholding aid from districts if a significant share of the students in the district did not take the assessment developed by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).

“I am recommending to the Board that we begin work on a next-generation, computer-based MCAS assessment program”, Chester wrote in his recommendation to the state board of education.

The new test would include items from both the MCAS and PARCC exams, along with questions specifically developed for MA, according to Chester’s recommendations.

His recommendation to the board, which will vote on the final decision November 17, comes after months of speculation on which option he would choose. Those numbers were presented to the Arkansas State Board of Education.

Terry Holliday, former Kentucky Education Commissioner and former President of the Council of Chief State School Officers, added that the announcement was “an important step forward” in ensuring continued comparability across states.

Schools will receive individual student test results in the coming weeks, Allen said.

“We in MA have been No. 1, and we want to stay No. 1, and we need to be able to control our education destiny”, said state Rep. Keiko Orrall, R-Lakeville, who fears the state would lose control over its assessments if it remains in the multi-state PARCC consortium.

Test items available in blocks providing states the ability to design their own tests utilizing sets of PARCC test questions in order to maintain the ability to make state comparisons across those item blocks. This spring, just six states and D.C. are slated to give the test.

It is a new, online-based standardized test. But, a lot of students in high school protested because of the amount of standardized testing they already have to endure throughout the year.

Since then, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and OH all have defected, and just seven states and the District plan to give the test in 2015-2016, raising questions about whether the consortium is in danger of disintegrating.

MA would remain a member of the PARCC consortium under the commissioner’s plan. And he said MA should contract with its own vendor, rather than contracting through PARCC.

If the board adopts Chester’s proposal, The new test would be given for the first time in the spring of 2017.

“My hope is that it would actually end up not being all that much more expensive, and maybe not more expensive at all in the near-term than administering two assessments”, Peyser said. MA Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests have been used in Bay State schools since 1998.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in town Thursday morning, said he had faith in any decision made by MA education officials.

“As educators, we believe PARCC is a superior assessment of students’ readiness to pursue careers and college level work”, the said in the statement. “I have every confidence MA will move in the right direction”.