By Anna Burgess
aburgess@sentinel andenterprise.com
MALDEN — Compared to MCAS results, preliminary results from the new online standardized test PARCC indicate that fewer students are meeting grade-level expectations, but state education officials cautioned not to read too much into those first results.
“This early report on PARCC results is preliminary and incomplete and therefore cannot yet be directly compared to this year’s MCAS results,” Education Secretary Jim Peyser said Monday.
On Monday, the state Department of Education released partial preliminary results for students who took PARCC — Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers — online last spring, as well as results for students who took MCAS — Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.
The preliminary results show that more students scored “proficient” or higher on MCAS than scored “meeting expectations” (which is essentially the same as “proficient”)” or higher on PARCC.
Looking at fifth-grade scores, for instance, 67 percent of students scored “proficient” or higher on the math portion of MCAS, while only 48 percent scored “meeting expectations” or higher on the math portion of PARCC.
Seventy-one percent of fifth-grade MCAS English scores were “proficient” or higher, but 55 percent of PARCC English scores were “meeting expectations” or higher.
Fifty percent of seventh-grade students who took MCAS scored “proficient” or higher in math, while 45 percent of those who took PARCC scored “meeting expectations” or higher in math. Of the seventh-graders who took MCAS, 69 percent scored “proficient” or higher in English, but only 57 percent of those who took PARCC scored “meeting expectations” or higher in English.
The pattern continues through grades 3-8, with the exception of fourth grade, where exactly the same percentage scored “proficient” as scored “meeting expectations” in English, and math had only a 1 percentage point difference.
The scores could be discouraging to teachers and parents of students who took PARCC for the first time and did not score “meeting expectations,” as well as to students.
But Linda Noonan, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, said she believes PARCC will be better for students in the long run.
She said the lower numbers of students meeting expectations “is not a reason for concern.”
“That was to be expected,” Noonan said. “I think what these scores do is confirm that PARCC is a better college and career readiness reader.”
Noonan said more lower scores on PARCC than on MCAS likely means that PARCC is a “more honest” assessment of how close students are to expectations for their grade level.
Pioneer Institute, a state public-policy research organization opposed to PARCC, did not return a request for comment Monday afternoon.
Pioneer Institute Executive Director Jim Stergios wrote at the beginning of this month that PARCC, which is based on national Common Core educational standards, would lower Massachusetts standards.
The Education Department said not much emphasis should be placed on the preliminary results released Monday.
They are limited, because although more than half the state’s school districts administered PARCC in grades 3-8, the results released are only those from the 59 percent of students who took PARCC online. Full PARCC results, broken down by district, will be available later this fall.
Even when all results are released, PARCC is still so new that the results may be skewed by students adjusting to a new test format.
Teach Plus Executive Director Lindsay Sobel said students have been excited to take the test on computers, “and it has been a great inspiration to school districts to provide the technology that we desperately need in our schools.”
During testing last spring, however, the online test experienced some glitches and may have been confusing for some students, which could affect results.
Marty Walz, the former chair of the House of Representatives’ Education Committee, said she believes the PARCC results show that Massachusetts has more work to do.
“We have not reached our goal of having every student in the state ready for college-level work and their chosen careers,” she said. “We know the path to education excellence is not easy, but I’m confident that, with time, we’ll outperform everyone in the nation. High standards and rigorous assessment is how we’ll maintain this edge.”
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