This story was updated on Thursday to correct the date the PARCC test would replace the MCAS test should the state board approve the change and to correctly summarize a proposed ballot question regarding the common core.
SPRINGFIELD — State adoption of the PARCC test to replace the MCAS exam is in the best interests of students, teachers, institutions of higher learning and the workplace, officials of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education said Wednesday.
During a meeting with members of the editorial board of The Republican and www.MassLive, Linda Noonan, executive director of the alliance, who was accompanied by a group of reform advocates, said the MCAS test is outdated and doesn't measure a students' critical thinking and problem solving skills that are necessary to succeed in college and the workplace.
The board of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is scheduled to vote in November on whether to replace the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test with the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career test.
The PARCC would replace MCAS in 2016, but the graduation requirement would take effect in 2019,
Opponents of the PARCC test are gathering signatures for a proposed 2016 ballot measure that would reverse the board of education vote to adopt the common core standards.
Students who pass the MCAS test, developed in the 1990s in the wake of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act, often feel "betrayed" when they get to college and find out they must take remedial non-credit courses before they can actually begin the post-secondary education, according to Lindsay Sobel, executive director of Teach Plus, a organization empowering teachers to take leadership positions on policy issues.
"They thought they'd be fine," when they got to college, Sobel said. "But they weren't."
"It's an honesty issue," Sobel said. "We owe it to them to provide them what they need to succeed."
Linda Prystupa, chairman of the education department at Springfield Technical Community College, agreed saying replacing the MCAS with the PARCC test would mean that more students would avoid taking courses that don't add up to credits toward graduation.
Many of the students who must take remedial courses when they get to STCC wind up discouraged and drop out, she said.
Noonan said the PARCC, which harnesses technology, assesses those broader range of skills needed in a global economy.
She said adoption of the PARCC test would push school districts to get up to speed on today's technology. Although the PARCC can be taken with pencil and paper, it is mostly taken on a computer.
Noonan and Sobel said adoption of the PARCC would also free up teachers from "teaching to the test," a longtime criticism of the MCAS test that puts more emphasis on rote memorization and forces teachers to spend much of the day preparing students for the exam.
"Test prep should be just good teaching," Sobel said.
Noonan said the Massachusetts schools that volunteered to try out the PARCC year gave the test high marks.
Sobel said her group found that 72 percent of the 350 teachers Teach Plus surveyed after comparing the two tests came away saying the PARCC was better than the MCAS.