Open PARCC Letter to Shelby County Legislative Delegation

Dear Shelby County Legislative Delegation,

My name is Jon Alfuth and I’m a high school geometry teacher at the Soulsville Charter School in Memphis, TN.  I’m writing to you today to express my strong support for the Common Core state standards and in particular support for their accompanying PARCC assessments.  My firsthand experience tells me that these new assessments are essential to empowering teachers to push their students to higher levels of thinking which will in turn set them up for success in college and in life.

For the past two years I taught Algebra I, which has a traditional multiple choice End of Course assessment.  And although it’s easy to determine whether or not students get the right answers, these types of assessments make it much more difficult to understand whether or not students truly understand the concepts involved.

Every multiple choice assessments has tricks that allow students to often get the answer without truly understanding the content.  So while my test data often said that my students were proficient in their understanding (I was a level 4 teacher my first year and a level 3 my second year) I often found myself wondering if they’d really learned the content or if they’d just learned how to “trick” the test.

After this year I will no longer have to wonder.  Along with full adoption of common core, we will see full adoption of the PARCC assessments.  Instead of full multiple choice, these tests will require students to complete an open response assessment that not only requires them to show their work but also requires them to display their thinking.

I’ve seen myself how assessments like these will push students like never before, which will push teachers in turn to raise the rigor of their teaching.  To prepare for full implementation next year I decided to introduce several elements of common core and PARCC to my classroom this year.  It’s been a struggle at times, but my students can now explain to me not only what they are doing on any given problem but also the principles at play behind them.  There’s no getting away from it.  They have to be able to show that they truly understand the content through their calculations and most importantly, their words.  Proficiency will not be possible without students putting their critical thinking skills on display.

PARCC also represents an important shift in the way we teach in Tennessee. These assessments mean that teachers can no longer get away with just teaching their students how to trick the test.  Proficiency will only be earned through years of hard work and critical thinking, driven by these new assessments. Additionally, while all teachers should already be pushing their students to these levels it’s a fact that sometimes we can get away with less because of the way we are assessed through multiple choice assessments.  This will no longer be a possibility going forward under PARCC.

PARCC assessments also represent an important step towards preparing our students for college and their future careers by pushing them to be critical thinkers and apply the skills they learn in a variety of open ended contexts.  No college professor or employer will every ask them to simply find x.  They will be given a complex task that requires application of knowledge from across a wide variety of disciplines, which is exactly the focus of common core and PARCC assessments.  These new tests will help hold teachers accountable for ensuring that students become the critical thinkers we need to ensure our country’s future.

Again, I highly encourage you to support implementation of the PARCC assessments in this coming year.  Our kids’ futures depend on it.

Sincerely,

Bluff City Ed

**if you want to send a similar letter, here’s a list of the entire shelby county delegation:

Shelby County Delegation:

SENATORS                                                                  

Ophelia Ford- [email protected]

Brian Kelsey- [email protected]

Jim Kyle- [email protected]

Reginald Tate- [email protected]

Mark Norris- [email protected]

 

HOUSE

Raumesh Akbari- [email protected]

Karen D. Camper- [email protected]

Jim Coley- [email protected]

Barbara Ward Cooper- [email protected]

John J. DeBerry Jr.-  [email protected]

G. A. Hardaway- [email protected]

Ron Lollar- [email protected]

Steve McManus- [email protected]

Larry J. Miller- [email protected]

Antonio Parkinson- [email protected]

Curry Todd- [email protected]

Joe Towns, Jr.-  [email protected]

Johnnie Turner- [email protected]

Mark White- [email protected]

19 comments for “Open PARCC Letter to Shelby County Legislative Delegation

  1. April 12, 2014 at 9:29 pm

    If we got rid of the tests entirely, teachers would be much more able to teach critical thinking, and the state would avoid wasting money we don’t have on these much more expensive tests. Good teachers should be trusted and respected, we shouldn’t talk about them as if they are lazy ne’er-do-wells only interested in tricking the tests. If that is what is happening because jobs are at stake, get rid of the tests. Don’t believe me? Look into the (lack of a) standardized testing system in Finland and the incredibly high achievement levels of Finnish children on international tests.

    • April 12, 2014 at 11:12 pm

      Finland also is incredibly different ethnically and socioeconomically from the US, so that’s not a great comparison. Its like comparing achievement at MUS in Memphis to the SCS overall achievement. And I do think testing can encourage critical thinking, especially in those teachers who don’t actively promote it. Like it or not, not everyone in our profession does and we need an accountability mechanism. If its done right, high quality teachers shouldn’t even be impacted because the test will only reinforce what they already do. PARCC gets us closer to that.

      • April 13, 2014 at 12:41 pm

        It’s a great comparison, because it also shows that the key to high test scores is ending poverty.

        We have other accountability mechanisms, just as the teachers in Finland do. We don’t need high stakes tests. Unitedoptout.com

        • April 13, 2014 at 2:16 pm

          And the key to ending poverty is great, widespread public education. And how will we know if we have great public education if we can’t measure it? And now we are back to the need for some form of standardized testing again. Full circle.

      • April 13, 2014 at 9:30 pm

        Wrong. Here’s a relevant quote from an article: “Yet Sahlberg doesn’t think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country — as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn’t lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.”

        http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

        We don’t need the tests.

        • April 14, 2014 at 6:25 am

          Do you notice the irony that your statement is only proveable because of testing (PISA)?

        • April 14, 2014 at 6:30 am

          Maybe we need less of them or different versions of them, but I find it interesting that you can’t make a claim about not needing testing in any form without referencing the data from those very tests. Seems that, at the very least, we need tests to help us identify when we will no longer need tests.

      • April 14, 2014 at 11:45 am

        PISA is a test, but it is not a high-stakes test. There is a very big difference, and so my statement is not ironic.

        • April 14, 2014 at 12:57 pm

          Regardless, I think the pt is valid that you still need a test to determine that you don’t need a test

  2. April 14, 2014 at 1:53 pm

    Yes, you need a test not tied to any stakes. Valid point. End HIGH-stakes testing. Unitedoptout.com

    • April 14, 2014 at 2:41 pm

      OK, here’s my problem with that approach. You eliminate all stakes but still test. How long until someone says we can’t tolerate the inequities we see and starts doing something about it? Only then we won’t have a system where everyone knows the rules. It will all be ad hoc and people and schools will be rewarded or punished arbitrarily. In short, I don’t think you can have a test without some sort of stakes tied to it to which everyone knows the rules.

      • April 14, 2014 at 3:33 pm

        To which I say: Look at Finland. What you say can’t be done is being done, with wonderful results for children. The US can have that too.

        • April 15, 2014 at 4:15 pm

          OK, even of I accept that, every state is NOT equal to Finland. For example Tennessee scored closest to khazakstan on the last PISA test. I can guarantee you PISA wouldn’t last long as a test with no stakes with numbers like that

      • April 17, 2014 at 9:20 am

        PISA has no stakes attached to it. I think you need to do some research on the differences between high-stakes versus low-stakes tests.

        Let me know if you would like me to point you toward some resources on this matter.

        • April 17, 2014 at 11:17 am

          I’m familiar with the PISA test. My point is that while it is currently not a high stakes test, if that’s the only assessment we used, I believe that its very nature as a tool of assessment would result in stakes being tied to it. However, it would be in a much more ad hoc and less fair way than they are right now.

      • April 17, 2014 at 3:40 pm

        That’s an interesting idea you have. I’m not sure what grounds you have for drawing that conclusion, as that has not happened in most of the countries in which PISA is used.

        • April 17, 2014 at 3:52 pm

          I think I already elaborated on my reasons for having this idea if you read through the comments I posted above.

  3. April 18, 2014 at 10:46 am

    I’m afraid your argument is not grounded in solid logic.

    • April 18, 2014 at 11:44 am

      The feeling is mutual, especially in light of the fact that PISA has now come out with tests for the local school level. Not saying that it WILL be used for high stakes decisions, but the pieces are in place if a group of policy makers wanted to go that way. I hope it doesn’t get used in high stakes decisions because I believe we need an impartial evaluation tests so we can compare internationally, but I believe that my point that the POTENTIAL for PISA to be used in this way is still valid.

      Read more about the school level test here. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/pisa-basedtestforschools.htm

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