Silver lining in latest test scores, Supt. Bickert says

School districts from coast to coast are being forced to explain their students’ drastically lower proficiency scores under the so-called Parcc standardized tests. But some like Ruidoso are trying to find a silver lining in those clouds, schools Supt. George Bickert said Wednesday.

Bickert is preparing an optimistic report to the school board arguing that the latest results show that Ruidoso students are moving up in state rankings when measured against other New Mexico districts.

“For example, in the 4th grade math results from White Mountain Elementary, in 2012-13 we ranked 383rd out of 412 schools participating,” Bickert said. “In 2014-15 on Parcc, we are 149th out of 407.”

Parcc stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career. The partnership was created by a group of states who wanted a test that would measure student proficiency against more rigorous standards and produce results with which states could be measured against other states.

Bickert said the latest results certainly prove that the new standards are more rigorous. Virtually all school districts are now seeing results slashing the number of students qualifying as proficient in every grade by up to half and occasionally more. Test designers meant to create such disappointment, he said.

“’We are raising the bar’ is the quote you always hear about Parcc,” Bickert said.

He said Massachusetts, which was used to seeing its students measure 70 percent proficient or higher on prior tests, is coming in with Parcc results in the mid-50s. Ruidoso, he said, stood in earlier tests at slightly above 50 percent and now is looking at 25 percent proficient.

It sounds awful, he acknowledged. But the slump is occurring nearly everywhere with the change in tests. And the way he measures his own performance is by comparing it with other New Mexico districts, especially those in areas with poverty levels comparable to Lincoln County. By that benchmark, Bickert said he believes Ruidoso schools are getting better.

In addition to demonstrating higher state rankings for Ruidoso at a given grade level, Bickert said his analysis will also show progress within a specific group of students as they have moved upward through the last two or three grades.

Bickert said the lower numbers Parcc is producing are an important reason that states are leaving the Parcc consortium. Even Massachusetts, one of the instigators and founding members of the partnership, decided last week to bail and develop its own test. What began as a cooperative of 26 states is now down to five plus the District of Columbia.

A recent report in the New York Times blamed the flight from Parcc on the low scores, anger among teachers over the impact of student test scores on their own evaluations, concern among parents over the stress on students caused by high-stakes testing, and disillusion with the Common Core standards that Parcc embraced.

If current trends continue, it looks as if the testing world will be thrown back into the chaos of floating standards and apples-to-oranges test results that Parcc sought to replace.

But Bickert said Gov. Susana Martinez and Education Secretary Hanna Skandera are absolutely committed to Parcc, and New Mexico is unlikely to join the exodus from the partnership.

“If there was a ‘Parcc Survivor’ reality show,” he said. “New Mexico would win.”