Maryland plans to replace PARCC with an assessment of their own The Baltimore Sun reports. Maryland’s upcoming departure coupled with New Jersey’s exit will drop the Common Core assessment consortium that once boasted 27 partners (including 24 states) down to five.
PARCC’s active partners include the District of Columbia, Illinois (grades 3-8 only), Louisiana (hybrid, grades 3-8 only), New Jersey (plans to withdraw), Maryland, Massachusetts (hybrid, grades 3-8 only), New Mexico, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Department of Defense Education Activity.
Maryland’s schools struggled with PARCC since its implementation. Less than one-half of the state’s students passed in 2017. The Maryland State Board of Education announced last fall they were delaying the requirement that students pass PARCC to graduate.
Liz Bowie for The Baltimore Sun wrote:
The state is seeking bids from contractors to design a new assessment that requires less time to take and grade, but it will not be ready for use until the 2019-2020 school year. So the state will spend another $11 million to continue testing with PARCC this spring.
The impetus for change came from Maryland State Superintendent Karen Salmon and Gov. Larry Hogan, who said he got many complaints.
“Nearly everyone in Maryland — parents, teachers, studentsand the governor want these tests to end,” Hogan said at a Board of Public Works meeting last month.
As I’ve written before when a state has decided to jettison PARCC or Smarter Balanced, as long as a state continues to use Common Core math and ELA standards they will have a Common Core-aligned assessment. The Every Student Succeeds Act mandates the alignment of a state’s standards and assessment.
I live in MD. I have looked at minutes from BPW meetings. The vendor they are leaning toward is New Meridian. New Meridian owns PARCC. We will get a computer adaptive PARCC test with a new name. We will still have CC curriculum. Our school systems will have to spend billions to have every school ready to take these tests online yet the Governor is hand slapping and hurling insults at County Executives and District Supers because school buildings aren’t fit to house rats, let alone children and teachers. We will NEVER be free of Pearson/PARCC until the current Governor is gone. And I’m not really sure of our relationship with Pearson….Montgomery County schools (in MD….right outside of DC) is OWNED by Pearson. The school system is a sort of Pearson incubator? Their curriculum is Pearson developed, and their testing is PARCC. Our current Gov is nothing but a lying bully…..he could have dissolved the MOU with Pearson/PARCC with the stroke of a pen, but he chose not to keep this campaign promise to the voters of MD. Instead, he doubled down on this mess and then appointed Chester Finn and Andy Smarick (Fordham) to the school board at the state level….and then added test friendly Karen Salmon to keep the machine running. All Hogan wants is vouchers.
Thanks for the comment, LisaM.