The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) was a brand new test administered last year by a group of states including Maryland, and the nation’s first year results are low, with less than 50 percent of students passing the test.

The PARCC was intended to evaluate a student’s progress and provide better information for teachers and parents about where the student both excels and needs help. The test is also meant to determine if a student is “proficient,” or ready for college.

“The first year of any new test is like a pilot,” Principal Joan Benz said. “We’ll look at the results, but it’s hard to evaluate its accuracy yet.”

According to a Nov. 6 Montgomery Community Media article, no one can fully analyze what the results mean because there is no other data to compare to this first year of the test. Also, the PARCC results cannot be compared to other tests like the Maryland School Assessments (MSA) or High School Assessments (HSA) because the PARCC tests are more rigorous.

Although the nation’s overall scores were low, MCPS students performed better than their peers within the state.

According to the Montgomery Community Media article, 38.6 percent of MCPS students met or exceeded expectations for the Algebra 1 test, which is 7.4 points higher than the performance across the state. For the Algebra 2 test, MCPS students scored 10.5 points higher than their peers across the state. Also, for the English 10 section, MCPS students averaged 4.3 points higher than the state.

Additionally, CHS performed better than the MCPS average.According to Maryland’s State of Department of Education 2015 report, student performance is measured by levels which define how the student compares to the passing score. Level one means a student has not yet met the passing score; level two means the student partially met it, and level three means the student approached the minimum score. Levels four and five represent that the student met or exceeded the passing score and is on track to be college and career ready.

At CHS for the Algebra 1 section of the test, 42.9 percent of students approached level three. For the Algebra 2 test, 63.3 percent of students met level four, and 40.1 percent of students met level four for the English 10 section.

According to the Montgomery Community Media article, Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers was concerned about the wide variance in performance at MCPS schools, illustrating the urgency to improve literacy and mathematics.

One reason for the low scores is that some students may not have taken the PARCC test seriously.

“Students were skipping the test,” junior Danielle Katz said. “For those who did show up, some were writing jokes as the English essays.”

According to a Nov. 5 Bethesda Magazine article, Board of Education President Patricia O’Neill heard that some students did not take the test seriously because they know that they have multiple choices throughout middle or high school to get a passing score to graduate, and therefore some did not feel the need to try and get a four or five.

During the actual test, some students were bored by the amount paperwork to fill out regarding their personal information and the expansion of the test to three days.

“It was like one hour of filling in our names and information and another two hours of the actual test,” Katz said. “A lot of people did not want to sit through it for each subject a day.”

The combination of the students not taking the test seriously and other performance gaps between MCPS schools are some of the factors that are to be considered for future years of the PARCC test.
According to Benz, she thinks CHS students are well-prepared for college regardless of their PARCC results.

“Just the percentage of our kids who go to college, which is around 98 percent, shows that our students are prepared for college,” Benz said.