“As we continue to focus on growing the Rhode Island economy and preparing young people for the challenging careers of the 21st-century, we have to develop and support great schools and a world-class public education system”, Gov. Gina Raimondo said. “Forty percent is nowhere near good enough, and the gains, where there are some, are small”. IL is among eight states and the District of Columbia which use the PARCC assessment, but beginning in 2017, the test will only be administered to students in grades three through eight. Bradford, however, dropped 13 points from 40.5 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations in 2015 to 28 percent in 2016.
Advertisement
Math scores rose by 5 percentage points this year so that almost 30 percent of all students met the standards, but the math improvements were not as high for black, Latino and low-income students, widening an existing gap.
“The District saw a 16 percent increase in participation rate overall with all schools increasing participation, perhaps most notably the 52 percent increase in participation in ELA and a 59 percent increase in participation in math at the high school level”, Assistant Superintendent Alicia Storey said.
Theoretically, if those graduation requirements had been in place for the previous school year, about 64 percent of students statewide earned the required score to graduate on the English 10 PARCC, and 60 percent earned the required score for Algebra I.
The first round of results, from the 2014-15 PARCC, a test aligned with the state’s version of the Common Core Standards, were published last fall and were considered poor. Rhode Island is expected to do so Thursday, and others are expected to follow in coming weeks, she said.
The assessment results were released one day after ISBE announced ACT scores had improved one-tenth of a point over a year ago and now match the national average.
RIPR’s Dave Fallon discusses 2016 PARCC scores with education reporter and News Director Elisabeth Harrison.
We caught up with Darlene Netcoh, President of the Warwick teachers union.
“Overall we are pleased with the trend”, Brown said. “It’s hard to extract meaning”. The pass rates for Hispanic, Latino and low-income students also lagged, and English language learners – including immigrants and second-generation Latino students – had the lowest pass rates of all.
“Our goal is that 100 percent of our students demonstrate proficiency on state assessments”, Ricci said.
“There is a persistent narrative in Maryland that everything is hunky-dory and the state can just rest on its laurels”, he said. “But that’s just not right”.
A consortium of states, including Rhode Island, developed the PARCC assessments, which are created to determine whether students are meeting the expectations of the Common Core State Standards.
Advertisement
That doesn’t necessarily mean the test is too hard, however, or that educators erred in replacing the old High School Assessment tests that students previously had taken for more than a decade.
