Much ado about nothing: one teacher’s perspective on PARCC

Colorado teachers can breathe a sigh of relief as initial apprehension gives way to understanding the new PARCC English Language Arts and Math tests, and align instruction and learning for PARCC 2016.

My students have had a fantastic year.  Our writing is truly remarkable, growth in reading comprehension and enjoyment is evident, and math….math is off the charts.  We love math…there are days when the kids would keep doing math right on through lunch if I would let them. And yet, as we got to know PARCC through the online practice tests provided by Pearson, I had some not so wonderful thoughts about what the makers of the test would be asking 8 and 9 year old kiddos to do. The reality is my students were prepared and actually enjoyed taking the tests.  As an educator, I could not have been more proud of my students, or certain of my standards based teaching.

Teaching is the one element in the teaching and learning cycle that we teachers have the most control over.  Criticism of the standards as federal overreach coupled with parental concern about data privacy, and teacher concern over loss of instructional time played a large part in the PARCC pushback and anti-testing movement this year.  Teachers have no control over this, but we do have complete control over teaching our new Colorado Academic Standards.

In the past, as testing windows approached, teachers around the state would check off the standards in the CSAP frameworks documents taking stock of which standards had been “covered” and which we still needed to cover.  With our new standards, and standards based teaching, my colleagues and I felt no need for this checklist teaching.

 Instead, we reviewed the PARCC-provided documents that outlined which standards would be addressed in both the midyear Performance Based Assessment (PBA) and the End of Year assessment (EOY). While not a super fun activity, reading these documents confirmed that good standards based, intentional instruction would be in complete alignment with the test.

Overall, the new standards require teachers to teach deeper and with more intentionality.  For example, the new math standards require a deeper level of instruction that is aligned with a focus on conceptual learning before procedural work. The application of deeper learning to real world situations has paid off as students show the relevance of their learning. When one of my parents asked her student how the PARCC math test went, he said, “We knew everything that was on the test.”  It’s important to note that he did not go on to say it was easy. It was not. One hour and 15 minutes for 11 questions tells you something about the rigor of this test.

Top students did not finish.  Formatting is an issue and there are many glitches for the techies to smooth out. As we wrap up our Math PARCC tests this week, students are reporting they liked the test, and already asking about the second round in May.

I hope teachers will use our understanding of the test to align our instruction, learning targets, and success criteria to better match the way students will show their learning, achievement, and growth.  In hindsight, I might need to admit it was the same technology that the kids loved that was a bit intimidating for teachers.  We teachers can embrace this and use the tools we already have to transform our reading and writing processes to align with the online writing we saw in PARCC.

The fear of the unknown fueled much of the uncertainty around PARCC. The purpose of PARCC has taken on a conflated meaning, blurring its purpose, to track learning over time, with the day to day of formative assessment.   Teacher attitudes toward learning and how we present our professional selves to students and our communities can support standards based instruction.

Yes, PARCC can get better. Aside from some tech bumps, what I saw was a test aligned to the standards we teach, and students who had incredibly positive and engaging interactions with the tests.  Our students were prepared, excited, and, a true barometer of how standards based teaching and learning is going in our classrooms.

Published in the  Denver Post on-line op-ed guest commentary March 18, 2015

http://www.denverpost.com/guestcommentary/ci_27736407/guest-commentary-much-ado-about-nothing-one-teachers

No…Standardized Tests do not Test Everything you do for Kids

The anti-testing movement continues to pick up momentum as teachers get on the  “the test does not test my relationship with students” bandwagon.  I  would caution teachers who  are buying into this accusation that they are contributing to the uncertainty and public distrust of standardized tests.  True, relationship building and support for students are not measured directly on annual standardized academic tests.   But we must not make the  argument that the tests are bad because our teaching and nurturing behaviors are not factored into a standardized test.

Lately, I have notice a movement on Facebook called #MoreThanAScoreCO…The messaging from teachers is that their students are more than a score.  Teachers on the site pose with photos of themselves using signs to declare what they do for children that is above and beyond academic teaching.  Here are a few:

FreeOurStudents.org invites the public and educators to take a stand against excessive standardized testing and join others at the “Our Students are More Than a Score” Rally at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on March 25 to support “time to teach and time to learn” in Colorado classrooms.  The posted signs send the message that the nurturing aspect of teaching can not be tested.  Using this as an argument against standardized testing just isn’t strong enough for me.  Each of these teacher’s statements is a factor of great teaching.  Hattie’s research on visible learning confirms the hypothesis that teacher influence has a measurable effect on student achievement.  These great teachers will have an impact on student performance on the test. I actually think these teachers should go further to acknowledge their impact on student test scores.

The second message in a video campaign from FreeOurStudents.org is the time for test prep that takes time away from teaching, the uselessness of the test scores, the time actual testing takes from teaching, and the stress put upon students during tests.

I am a third grade teacher who has intentionally taught my standards all year with engaging learning activities and research based, or proven, instructional methods.  As our testing window neared, my students and I felt completely prepared for the upcoming computerized tests that would cover about 75% of the entire set of third grade Colorado Academic Standards.  We did not lose hours or weeks to “test prep” and we did use the Pearson provided tutorials and practice tests to familiarize ourselves with the format and tools that would be available on the test. On test days, student interaction with the tests seemed a positive experience for my students.

The current pulse on education and testing is important.  There is too much testing, therefore, we need to use the best test, and let go of other tests that are not aligned with standards.  We have legislated our way to too much testing with No Child Left Behind at a national level, and with our own Colorado READ act at the state level.  Add to our federal and state level testing the  various district level testing, and yes, this  is a disaster.  The issue must be too much testing, not that we are testing teacher qualities that cannot be measured.  If anything, go to a rally, but ask for less testing, not tests to measure nurturing teachers.

Third Grade ELA PARCC…Rookie Reflections!

The third grade English Language Arts PARCC  on-line assessment is over for this year. For the most part, after a shocking first day, it was better than expected.  We knew months ago students would have three tests; the literary analysis, the research simulation, and the narrative, all of which were combined reading and writing tasks.

As teachers, we clued in quickly to some striking nuances and rallied.  For example who would tell third grade kiddos to write an essay in a 1 inch by 6 inch text box…not us, but, yes this did result in more than a few one sentence essays. And, this strange little disconnect from our classroom instruction and practice prompted me to wonder how best to address this problem. Wonderings are just a wonderful thing…turns out, I had already built a writing prompt with a video link, that provided kiddos with a regular sized word doc, with many of the same tools, and the added capability for students to submit their writing to the teacher on-line, and for the teacher to return the writing, with comments, back to the student. This is is all possible through our district’s Discovery Education, and a super easy to use tool called the Writing Prompt Builder…

This is an example of a writing prompt our 4th grade team used for our yearlong writing prompt project in 2012.

Student could watch the link, write, and submit their work directly to their teacher for feedback and rubric notes.

This is an example of a writing prompt the PEARSON team put together for millions of dollars and is using in the current  PARCC test to assess student achievement of the COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS…

So there you have it…the writing prompt and writing area from our friends at PEARSON, and a teacher created writing prompt complete with submit to teacher and teacher feedback capabilities.  This formative assessment is part of our day to day teaching and learning cycle… Again, the teacher created writing work was created in Discovery Education using the Writing Prompt Builder.  It takes maybe 10 minutes to build and assign.

I am happy to help and answer any questions my fellow teachers may have, and to PEARSON, I say, do better.