COLUMBUS — A controversial statewide assessment test that Ohio used for one year in K-12 schools might have been fixable, but it had become too toxic to continue, said the chairman of a Senate committee examining state testing.
Ohio already has picked a replacement less than 24 hours after Gov. John Kasich signed a $71 billion, two-year budget that eliminated funding for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, test used to measure whether students were meeting new Common Core standards.
“The issue with PARCC was frankly a brand issue at this point,” said Sen. Peggy Lehner (R., Kettering), chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a special advisory committee on testing.
“Many of the problems with PARCC could have been resolved in year two of the testing, but there had been such an uproar and so much social media about this, that for people to give it a fair trial, for parents not to be opting out ... people felt it was going to be too difficult,” she said. “No matter how good or how bad PARCC actually was, the perception was that it was bad.”
Ms. Lehner and Mr. Kasich have defended Common Core against allegations that the K-12 education standards in math and English represent a federal intrusion into local schools and require too much testing.
PARCC didn’t fare as well. It faced criticism from conservatives engaged in the broader fight against Common Core, teachers whose own performance eventually would be judged by student scores on the tests, and schools that had to implement them.
Critics argued that the test was too time-consuming, disrupting multiple school days and schedules.
Some students taking it online faced technological problems.
“The pendulum had swung too far,” said Tom Hosler, superintendent of Perrysburg Schools. “We were so concerned about assessments that soon the assessments were driving all we do. When a third-grader is sitting for tests in two subject areas for an equivalent amount of time that someone has to sit to take the bar exam, that’s too far.”
Kay Wait, executive secretary for the Toledo Federation of Teachers, serves on Ms. Lehner’s testing committee.
She said getting rid of PARCC doesn’t address broader concerns about losing valuable instructional time to implement tests and ensuring that the state promptly gets the data it needs to know whether students are learning what they need to know.
“We can’t say whether it was a good test or not,” she said. “It wasn’t a transparent test. We could not look at test items while giving the test, and we haven’t seen the results to see if the questions align with the Common Core.”
The day after the budget signing, Richard Ross, Ohio’s education superintendent, announced that the state would expand its contract with Washington’s American Institutes of Research, which supplies Ohio’s tests for social studies and science.
"We will not be purchasing off-the-shelf tests from AIR,” Mr. Ross said. “Ohio educators will be working with them to develop Ohio tests that do a good job in assessing what our students in Ohio are learning.”
Greg Harris is state director for StudentsFirst, a nonprofit focused on education and teacher reform that was founded by Michelle Rhee, a former Toledo resident and chancellor of schools in Washington. He said Ohio has the advantage of familiarity with AIR.
“Having said that, a lot of the people on the education front lines who were surveyed said there wasn’t much daylight between PARCC and AIR,” he said. “It’s obviously a premature decision to do away with PARCC. We don’t even have the results of the exam yet. It was a matter of political timing and not good public policy. The powers that be decided that PARCC is too toxic.”
Staff writer Nolan Rosenkrans contributed to this story.
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.
First Published July 3, 2015, 4:00 a.m.