Framingham Superintendent Issues Letter to Parents Encouraging PARCC Participation

Superintendent of Schools Stacy Scott sent this letter home to parents and guardians on Friday afternoon. It was not sent to Framingham Patch as a press release. Patch is publishing the letter as a community service, as there has been a lot of discussion about the PARCC testing.

Photo Credit: Susan Petroni/Petroni Media Company

Below is the complete text of the letter:

I am writing to encourage all parents to participate in the PARCC testing in Framingham this year.

There has been a lot of discussion and concerns about PARCC’s impact on teaching and learning as well as on our students’ well being. When MCAS first came out, there were similar concerns that it would hijack learning and move schools in the wrong direction. MCAS has its shortcomings but we have used it as a source of feedback to inspire better teaching and learning. PARCC will offer valuable information about our capacity as a district.

As a district, we decided to participate in PARCC because we expect to learn more from participation than from opting out.

MCAS (or PARCC) is our source of feedback for the year to come. We use the result for strategy formulation. It provides feedback to students, teachers and administrators.

Next fall, I hope to have a complete picture of how our students do on PARCC so that we can organize our instruction for the next generation of testing, whether it is PARCC or an updated MCAS.

State tests will never be perfect, especially a newly implemented one.

I respect that there is disagreement on this issue. Hopefully, someday such tests will be designed and implemented at the classroom level by teachers and validated by the district and state. These tests will flow seamlessly into instruction. We are working to make that more of a reality. Until that time, we have MCAS and PARCC and we can already see benefits from weaving it into instruction as we saw from MCAS. PARCC provides both benefits and deficits such as:

• We lose valued benefits if we opt out as a district or refuse to test our students
• Our current 7th grade will take the PARCC (or an improved MCAS test with similar questions like PARCC) to graduate from Framingham High School
• Reengineering our classroom instruction to accommodate new types of questions will take time. Students who refuse the test will not be able to take advantage of opportunities to practice more challenging assessments.
• Families, teachers and administrators will not have detailed feedback on students’ strengths and weaknesses from the item analysis of PARCC
• We will have considerably less information about how we need to change instruction to better prepare our students for our updated curriculum
• Often, new curriculum and assessments seem to be the main focus of instruction. This wears off as components of the assessment are embedded into instruction regularly.
• Results from PARCC will tell us a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of our instructional capacity
• PARCC will become more carefully woven into instruction and will take less time to administer than MCAS
Certainly, the test must be calibrated developmentally and academically and some students are more used to academic conversations, analyzing complex texts and comparing issues and ideas from a variety of sources. This will take practice but our students will rise to the occasion. If we are calm and take on PARCC as an opportunity for growth then our students will not be terrified or traumatized by the experience. They will do their best and we will help them move forward.

I sincerely hope that you will join us in making our pilot of the PARCC a successful one. I respect the rights of individuals to speak up about their concerns over PARCC. I expect our teachers will do their best to support students in the assessment we have decided to take. We will carefully support students and encourage them to not be overly frustrated or distressed. I hope those who have considered opting out will reconsider and join in as we give our good faith effort to do our best. Please talk it over with your principal if you still have questions.

Thank you for your continued support.