EDITORIAL: NJ still stuck with PARCC — for now

A special commission examining student testing in New Jersey has recommended the state continue using the controversial PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) exams.

That’s no surprise. Christie created the Study Commission on the Use of Student Assessments in New Jersey as a response to concerns about PARCC and its role in New Jersey education, but the governor remains a PARCC supporter. Even when the Christie opted to rebrand the Common Core standards on which PARCC is based with some tweaks and a new name, he stuck by PARCC.

This is where we need to offer a few reminders to understand the landscape upon which this debate is playing out:

•PARCC is supposed to be tougher than the old standardized tests, which means lower scores, as evidenced by results from the 2014-15 school year;

•Lower scores can unfairly hurt perceptions of school districts and teachers;

•Scores are used as part of teacher evaluations;

•Christie is a long-time critic of public education in New Jersey;

•Christie hates teachers.

Put that altogether and the PARCC picture becomes clearer. Christie wants to damage the image of public schools to validate his own criticisms, fair or not. The governor also has a phobia about teachers; his level of resentment and abuse is off the charts, so much so that he wants to punish teachers through an evaluation process that relies to some degree on those lower scores.

So, yes, of course a study commission ordered by Christie will support PARCC.

We could overlook Christie’s questionable intentions if the PARCC testing seemed likely to effectively contribute to raising academic standards. But there remain serious questions about both the quality of PARCC and how it is administered. A more challenging assessment is one thing, but it must also be fair and grade-level appropriate. PARCC may not be. Many states that once used PARCC have already dumped it.

On the encouraging side, the commission isn’t pushing for meaningfully higher PARCC stakes. As it stands, for example, passing PARCC won’t be a high-school graduation requirement until the class of 2020; students can also use alternate test scores. The commission recommends afterwards that high-school students be forced to take PARCC, but without requiring a passing grade; students would still be able to use alternate exams, such as the SAT, to graduate.

New Jersey Education Association President Wendell Steinhauer criticized the commission’s recommendations as mostly vague and pointless and we’d agree. The panel suggested, for instance, that districts evaluate all of their testing efforts to reduce redundancies and that they should develop more efficient teaching practices to try to reduce test-prep classroom time, as if schools haven’t already been doing that.

School districts for now have little choice but to make the best of PARCC, and some tweaks in the testing for 2015-16 may help. The departure from office of a public education-hating governor within the next two years, however, may soon bring change.