PARCC Scores released by District/School/Grade

Although obviously not ideal, I can see the appeal of using the SAT/ACT in place of PARCC. It seems practical, because one goal of common core is college readiness... and these exams are intended to have some predictive relationship to college performance. 

It also seems practical since it would do away with the need for students from lower income families to either figure out how to pay for the exam, or how to request fee waivers.

It's probably also a far easier road to take than trying to figure out how to incentivize high school students to take the PARCC seriously when they have many other priorities.

If the switch is made now to SAT/ACT, I expect that it would stay that way for a while, allowing for long term tracking. No one can use the HS PARCC 2015 results as a baseline anyway with the high opt-out rate. 

Perhaps the question the test is answering just changes. In Grades 3-8, the test is supposed to answer if students have learned the Standards that are taught at those grade levels. In high school, where students may begin to focus more on some content areas than others, the question may be less about content learned, and more about if students have been provided with the foundation that is related to success in college.

Well, for the SAT it's been pretty well shown that the single best predictor of scores is family income.

And there's more and more evidence that grades are a better predictor of college success -- especially for minority and disadvantaged kids, so it's a lousy instrument to assess how well curriculum has been delivered or key skills developed, and to measure achievement gaps.

Not up on the details of the ACT in those respects.

jfburch said:

Well, for the SAT it's been pretty well shown that the single best predictor of scores is family income.

Do you think it will be any different for PARCC? The district's ES results, even from the rocky first year, says otherwise. 

jfburch said:

And there's more and more evidence that grades are a better predictor of college success -- especially for minority and disadvantaged kids, so it's a lousy instrument to assess how well curriculum has been delivered or key skills developed, and to measure achievement gaps.

Agreed. There's abundant evidence SAT is a poor indicator of college success. 

xavier67 said:

jfburch said:

Well, for the SAT it's been pretty well shown that the single best predictor of scores is family income.

Do you think it will be any different for PARCC? The district's ES results, even from the rocky first year, says otherwise. 

jfburch said:

And there's more and more evidence that grades are a better predictor of college success -- especially for minority and disadvantaged kids, so it's a lousy instrument to assess how well curriculum has been delivered or key skills developed, and to measure achievement gaps.

Agreed. There's abundant evidence SAT is a poor indicator of college success. 

Plus SAT is new starting this March.  That complicates assessing whether switching tests from PARCC is value added.

ctrzaska said:

jfburch said:

Students were counted in their zoned schools--not the schools they attend.  This had the biggest effect at Seth Boyden, but ELL students zoned for other schools would not be counted as Clinton students and that could skew the results.

That's ridiculous.

That makes no sense ... who is the knuckle head to rap on the noggin on that one? Also it should be fairly easy to fix that NOW. Re-run the numbers with the students being in I don't know how about for a start the place they took the darn test and if that is too hard how about the school they attend they should be able to find that information somewhere.

I wonder whether we spent too much time learning PowerPoint and not any on Excel pivot tables.

CapnMarko said:

ctrzaska said:

jfburch said:

Students were counted in their zoned schools--not the schools they attend.  This had the biggest effect at Seth Boyden, but ELL students zoned for other schools would not be counted as Clinton students and that could skew the results.

That's ridiculous.

That makes no sense ... who is the knuckle head to rap on the noggin on that one? Also it should be fairly easy to fix that NOW. Re-run the numbers with the students being in I don't know how about for a start the place they took the darn test and if that is too hard how about the school they attend they should be able to find that information somewhere.

You'd think it would be an easy fix, right?  Well it's not, I have no idea why, but for some reason they are unable to fix it  

If someone messed up the school rostering data, unfortunately the window to fix it was probably closed by the State many months ago. In my experience, the New Jersey Dept of Ed seems to have less flexibility with fixing roster data errors than some other states.

xavier67 said:
The district's ES results, even from the rocky first year, says otherwise. 
 

Typo?  ES results?

Sorry. ES=Elementary Schools

jfburch said:

Well, for the SAT it's been pretty well shown that the single best predictor of scores is family income.

Historically, yes.  That said, the new SAT appears to be trying to break that connection. 

For example, there was an attempt to level the playing field by providing free test-prep online. Also, as the new CEO was a key player in the common core, I assume some changes to the SAT are intended to better align the SAT with common core standards. 

Although it's too soon to tell if the new SAT will have any predictive validity for college outcomes, if a majority of students will take it anyway, and take it seriously, it should at least provide more reliable results than 11th grade PARCC (which due to high opt-outs may not be reliable nor valid for any inferences).

20% to 25% of NJ 11th graders didn't take the test -- that's not nearly as dramatic as our district's opt outs.  Still need to see what happens over time.

And xavier, one thing the Elementary results show is that the majority of kids below expectations are in category 3, very close.  That was something that I believe was true in our district and that was obscured by the NJ ASK categories, so that all kids who were deemed "not proficient" were seen as in the same boat, when they were not.  And we'll need to be able to compare cohorts, but it does seem as if, for the most part, the longer kids are in our district, the less likely they are to be in the lowest 2 categories.

(Increasing numbers of opt outs in the middle and especially HS muddy the waters for those grade levels.)

Also, to the extent that many/most of the economically disadvantaged kids are minority, that skews the racial statistics.  I'd really like to see non-economically disadvantaged broken out by race.

sprout said:

Although it's too soon to tell if the new SAT will have any predictive validity for college outcomes, if a majority of students will take it anyway, and take it seriously, it should at least provide more reliable results than 11th grade PARCC (which due to high opt-outs may not be reliable nor valid for any inferences).

For this year, it is not clear that a majority of the students will take the SAT.  Right now, ACT is the favored test and seems to be sold out or nearly sold for the upcoming offerings.  it will take the SAT some time to stabilize, I guess.  From the little I know about the SAT and ACT, I have no idea how they predict college readiness.  

jfburch said:

Well, for the SAT it's been pretty well shown that the single best predictor of scores is family income.

What a coincidence.  Family income seems to be a predictor of performance in school as well.