A teacher, under legal threat from
PARCC, describes how 4th graders were slammed with this year's off-the-rails
testing. PARCC: The secret (and mandated!) tests
that no public school teacher can prepare students for -- because the content
is secret until the day of the test.
"We can look carefully at one sample to examine the health of the entire system– such as testing a drop of water to assess the ocean. So too, we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in many public schools across the United States."
The PARCC Test: Exposed
The author of this blog
posting is a public school teacher who will remain anonymous.
I will not reveal my district or my
role due to the intense legal ramifications for exercising my Constitutional
First Amendment rights in a public forum. I was compelled to sign a security form
that stated I would not be “Revealing or discussing passages or test items with
anyone, including students and school staff, through verbal exchange, email,
social media, or any other form of communication” as this would be considered a
“Security Breach.” In response to this demand, I can only ask—whom are we
protecting?
There are layers of not-so-subtle
issues that need to be aired as a result of national and state testing policies
that are dominating children’s lives in America. As any well prepared educator
knows, curriculum planning and teaching requires knowing how you will assess
your students and planning backwards from that knowledge. If teachers are
unable to examine and discuss the summative assessment for their students, how
can they plan their instruction? Yet, that very question assumes that this test
is something worth planning for. The fact is that schools that try to plan
their curriculum exclusively to prepare students for this test are ignoring the
body of educational research that tells us how children learn, and how to
create developmentally appropriate activities to engage students in the act of
learning. This article will attempt to provide evidence for these claims as a
snapshot of what is happening as a result of current policies.
The PARCC test is
developmentally inappropriate
In order to discuss the claim that
the PARCC test is “developmentally inappropriate,” examine three of the most
recent PARCC 4th grade items.
A book leveling system, designed by
Fountas and Pinnell, was made “more rigorous” in order to match the Common Core
State Standards. These newly updated benchmarks state that 4th Graders should
be reading at a Level S by the end of the year in order to be considered
reading “on grade level.” [Celia’s note: I do not endorse leveling books or
readers, nor do I think it appropriate that all 9 year olds should be reading a
Level S book to be thought of as making good progress.]
The PARCC, which is supposedly a test
of the Common Core State Standards, appears to have taken liberties with regard
to grade level texts. For example, on the Spring 2016 PARCC for 4th Graders,
students were expected to read an excerpt from Shark Life: True Stories about
Sharks and the Sea by Peter Benchley and Karen Wojtyla. According to Scholastic,
this text is at an interest level for Grades 9-12, and at a 7th Grade reading
level. The Lexile measure is 1020L, which is most often found in texts that are
written for middle school, and according to Scholastic’s own conversion chart would be
equivalent to a 6th grade benchmark around W, X, or Y (using the same Fountas
and Pinnell scale).
Even by the reform movement’s own
standards, according to MetaMetrics’ reference material on Text Complexity
Grade Bands and Lexile Bands, the newly CCSS aligned “Stretch”
lexile level of 1020 falls in the 6-8 grade range. This begs the question, what
is the purpose of standardizing text complexity bands if testing companies do
not have to adhere to them? Also, what is the purpose of a standardized test
that surpasses agreed-upon lexile levels?
So, right out of the gate, 4th
graders are being asked to read and respond to texts that are two grade levels
above the recommended benchmark. After they struggle through difficult texts
with advanced vocabulary and nuanced sentence structures, they then have to
answer multiple choice questions that are, by design, intended to distract
students with answers that appear to be correct except for some technicality.
Finally, students must synthesize two
or three of these advanced texts and compose an original essay. The ELA portion
of the PARCC takes three days, and each day includes a new essay prompt based
on multiple texts. These are the prompts from the 2016 Spring PARCC exam for
4th Graders along with my analysis of why these prompts do not reflect the true
intention of the Common Core State Standards.
ELA 4th Grade Prompt #1
Refer to the passage from “Emergency
on the Mountain” and the poem “Mountains.” Then answer question 7.
1.
Think about how the structural
elements in the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” differ from the
structural elements in the poem “Mountains.”
Write an essay that explains the
differences in the structural elements between the passage and the poem. Be
sure to include specific examples from both texts to support your response.
The above prompt probably attempts to
assess the Common Core standard RL.4.5: “Explain major differences
between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems
(e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings,
descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a
text.”
However, the Common Core State
Standards for writing do not require students to write essays comparing the text
structures of different genres. The Grade 4 CCSS for writing about reading
demand that students write about characters, settings, and events in
literature, or that they write about how authors support their points in
informational texts. Nowhere in the standards are students asked to write
comparative essays on the structures of writing. The reading standards ask
students to “explain” structural elements, but not in writing. There is a huge
developmental leap between explaining something and writing an analytical essay
about it. [Celia’s note: The entire enterprise of analyzing text structures in
elementary school – a 1940’s and 50’s college English approach called “New
Criticism” — is ridiculous for 9 year olds anyway.]
The PARCC does not assess what it
attempts to assess
ELA 4th Grade Prompt #2
Refer to the passages from “Great
White Shark” and Face the Sharks. Then answer question 20.
Using details and images in the
passages from “Great White Sharks” and Face to Face with Sharks, write an essay
that describes the characteristics of white sharks.
It would be a stretch to say that
this question assesses CCSS W.4.9.B: “Explain how an author uses
reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.”
In fact, this prompt assesses a
student’s ability to research a topic across sources and write a research-based
essay that synthesizes facts from both articles. Even CCSS W.4.7, “Conduct
research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different
aspects of a topic,” does not demand that students compile information from
different sources to create an essay. The closest the standards come to
demanding this sort of work is in the reading standards; CCSS RI.4.9 says: “Integrate
information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about
the subject knowledgeably.” Fine. One could argue that this PARCC prompt
assesses CCSS RI.4.9.
However, the fact that the texts
presented for students to “use” for the essay are at a middle school reading
level automatically disqualifies this essay prompt from being able to assess
what it attempts to assess. (It is like trying to assess children’s math
computational skills by embedding them in a word problem with words that the child
cannot read.)
ELA 4th Grade Prompt #3
1.
In “Sadako’s Secret,” the
narrator reveals Sadako’s thoughts and feelings while telling the story. The
narrator also includes dialogue and actions between Sadako and her family.
Using these details, write a story about what happens next year when Sadako
tries out for the junior high track team. Include not only Sadako’s actions and
feelings but also her family’s reaction and feelings in your story.
Nowhere, and I mean nowhere in the
Common Core State Standards is there a demand for students to read a narrative
and then use the details from that text to write a new story based on a prompt.
That is a new pseudo-genre called “Prose Constructed Response” by the PARCC
creators, and it is 100% not aligned to the CCSS. Not to mention, why are 4th
Graders being asked to write about trying out for the junior high track team?
This demand defies their experiences and asks them to imagine a scenario that
is well beyond their scope.
Clearly, these questions are poorly
designed assessments of 4th graders CCSS learning. (We are setting aside the
disagreements we have with those standards in the first place, and simply
assessing the PARCC on its utility for measuring what it was intended to
measure.)
Rather than debate the CCSS we
instead want to expose the tragic reality of the countless public schools
organizing their entire instruction around trying to raise students’ PARCC
scores.
Without naming any names, I can tell
you that schools are disregarding research-proven methods of literacy learning.
The “wisdom” coming “down the pipeline” is that children need to be exposed to
more complex texts because that is what PARCC demands of them. So children are
being denied independent and guided reading time with texts of high interest
and potential access and instead are handed texts that are much too hard
(frustration level) all year long without ever being given the chance to grow
as readers in their Zone of Proximal Development (pardon my reference to those
pesky educational researchers like Vygotsky.)
So not only are students who are
reading “on grade level” going to be frustrated by these so-called “complex
texts,” but newcomers to the U.S. and English Language Learners and any student
reading below the proficiency line will never learn the foundational skills
they need, will never know the enjoyment of reading and writing from intrinsic
motivation, and will, sadly, be denied the opportunity to become a critical
reader and writer of media. Critical literacies are foundational for active
participation in a democracy.
We can look carefully at one sample
to examine the health of the entire system– such as testing a drop of water to
assess the ocean. So too, we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the
high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in
many public schools across the United States.
