Dive Brief:
- Questions have arisen around the validity of the 2014-15 PARCC test results after officials from the testing consortium revealed that students who took the tests on computers scored, overall, lower than those who did not.
- Though the pattern exists "on average," it was not found to have occurred in every single state.
- Nevertheless, the hard statistics behind the discrepancies haven't been released yet, despite the fact that 4 out of every 5 students took the test via computer.
Dive Insight:
Critics might view the latest snafu as yet another nail in the coffin for PARCC exams. A significant restructuring of the PARCC testing system was announced last November, after an Education Commission of the States analysis showed that only six states and the District of Columbia planned to use the consortium's exams this school year. That brought the number of states using PARCC down from 11 last year.
Notably, a rejection of the exam by Massachusetts was largely read as symbolic, since the state "is widely seen as kind of the gold standard in successful education reform," according to Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California.
