After the controversial switch to Common Core standards for this academic year, how the state compares the scores for the new test with its previous test could produce a massive mess.
This year, scores will be based on the MCT2 assessment, and next year’s test scores will be based on Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or PARCC, Vicksburg-Warren School District Superintendent Chad Shealy told parents gathered Thursday night for a townhall meeting with him and District 2 Trustee Alonzo Stevens.
“It is completely different. The standards are different. To take those two entities and compare them to each other is going to be absurd. I don’t know how our state is going to handle that,” Shealy said.
The fact that there is no baseline is a major problem with the new assessment system, Shealy said.
“I tell my teachers all the time it’s kind of like an arranged marriage. We didn’t get to date it, take it to the mall, go to a movie or take it out to dinner,” Shealy said. “It’s been bestowed upon us, and it is our challenge to make sure that our children rise to the occasion.”
The PARCC rubric, which was chosen by the state, is not without its upsides.
Under the new system, test scores take into account the academic growth of each individual student.
“The old system was based on a child who scored advanced got counted four times. A child that scored proficient got counted three times. Two times for basic, and nothing for minimum. When you fleshed all that out, as long as you had a bunch of proficient and advanced kids it didn’t really matter what you did with the bottom group,” he said.
So what should Warren County parents expect?
Shealy said he oversaw the implementation of Common Core standards while he was principal at Gary Road Intermediate School in Byram, and there he saw students struggle with grammar but begin to excel in math because of Common Core’s broader approach to teaching mathematics.
“For the first time the ones who didn’t initially get it began to get it,” Shealy said.
In reading, the biggest change in the shift to Common Core, he said, is shift away from traditional study of fiction, poetry and prose. Those are still in the curriculum, Shealy said, but a great focus is placed on nonfiction.
“In everyday life what you read and you operate under are more nonfiction. You deal with informational texts,” he said.
Reading passages are also getting much longer and more complex and every class including math has a focus on writing, he said.
“That’s one of the biggest differences in students who come from homes that don’t have parents with a high educational backgrounds is a word base. They don’t have that language content. So that’s part of the major push,” he said.
How students performed in their final year of MCT2 testing is still under lock and key at the Mississippi Department of Education.
“We got an initial group of scores that were sent out and a few weeks later they said ‘those aren’t right. Here’s another set.’” Shealy said.
Shealy had prepared to give those test scores to the school board, but the state department of education again said the scores needed work before being released. Scores are expected to arrive mid-October, he said.