JACKSON — Mississippi is withdrawing from a multi-state testing consortium as the state Board of Education prepares to seek new bids for state tests and tries to navigate political pressure surrounding its selection of tests and continued use of the Common Core State Standards.
The board voted Friday to withdraw from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers on Jan. 25. State Superintendent Carey Wright says the Mississippi Department of Education plans to release a request seeking a new assessment contract on Feb. 2.
Mississippi had been a founding member of PARCC, which developed tests to assess learning under the Common Core State Standards. It’s not the first state to leave the group, which will have 11 states and the District of Columbia remaining.
“The board really wanted more control over these assessments,” said board Chairman John Kelly of Gulfport.
Testing firm Pearson PLC was hired by New Mexico to develop tests for the consortium, and Mississippi officials sought to adopt the PARCC tests for multiple years last fall. But Mississippi signed only a one-year emergency contract with Pearson, adopting the tests for this spring only.
That’s because a state review board said it would reject the contract because the Mississippi officials didn’t consider other vendors.
PARCC has been one of the lightning rods in the expanding fight over Common Core in Mississippi, with Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, all calling to dump them. Common Core was adopted by Mississippi and many other states in an attempt to provide national benchmarks while helping students learn more analytically and less by memorization. But opponents say the initiative was improperly foisted on the states by the federal government. They also reject the PARCC tests, because they’re designed to assess Common Core and because the federal government helped pay to develop them.
Some local superintendents in Mississippi support Common Core but dislike PARCC. They’re pushing for the state to adopt exams from the ACT testing organization. Gunn and Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, have both introduced bills intended to mandate a switch to ACT tests.
Other lawmakers have other ideas. Sen. Videt Carmichael, R-Meridian, has introduced a bill that specifically bars use of PARCC and requires Mississippi to own the test it uses, which could bar use of any off-the-shelf tests such as those written by ACT.
Wright and Kelly say they want the competition to be open to Pearson, ACT or any test vendor who can meet state standards, whether with an existing or custom-designed test.
“We’re not precluding ACT or anyone else from applying,” Kelly said. “ACT or any other assessment we have is going to have to be aligned with the state standards.”
One of the benefits of the PARCC test is that it will produce comparable results across states, unlike old Mississippi-only tests. Wright said she favors preserving such comparability “as much as we can.”
Another wrinkle in the evolving testing fight is the future of the subject tests in biology, algebra, English and U.S. history that high school students must pass to graduate in Mississippi. All the testing bills so far would kill those exit exams. Wright, though, says she wants to preserve them.
“I think the parents desrve the right to know what their children know at the end their education,” she said.
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