Testing talk slows action on jobs

Rhode Island businesses have long complained that too many young job seekers don’t have the basic math, reading and writing skills needed to fill available jobs.

At a 2012 Providence Business News Summit on Employers & Education, Community College of Rhode Island President Ray Di Pasquale said pointedly that the state needed “an action plan, not a talking plan,” to better connect students to jobs.

Fast forward to 2015, however, and the state appears still to be mired in talking, rather than moving forward to better prepare students for college and the workforce.

The latest example is the debate over the standardized PARCC assessment that is new to Rhode Island this year. Set to be administered in three-week windows as soon as March 12, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers will be used to establish a new baseline, or starting point, for future testing, says Deborah Gist, Rhode Island’s outgoing commissioner of elementary and secondary education.

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PARCC testing replaces the NECAP for math and reading this school year, after lawmakers postponed until 2017 using the latter as a graduation requirement following a flood of concerns that too many schools were not ready to implement the requirement.

PARCC assessments are designed to test readiness to enter college or careers without remedial help in reading, writing or math, Gist said.

In the fall of 2014, 66 percent of the students entering the Community College of Rhode Island needed some form of remedial coursework – lower than the 74 percent recorded in 2009, but still a concern, she said.

Gist last year said she expected a successful implementation of PARCC following a smooth trial run in Rhode Island and 11 other states where it is being used. But pockets of parents across the state are now moving to have their children opt out of the test.

The added rigor of the testing may be part of the reason, said Lawrence P. Filippelli, assistant superintendent of schools in Scituate, home to about 1,400 students.

“If a parent doesn’t want the student to take the test, the student shouldn’t be forced to,” said Filippelli, “but the flip side is: testing and high expectations are a part of every facet of life, so allowing a student to not participate … could [send] the message it’s OK to pick and choose what assessments students take.”

Gist in an email said “penalties or consequences for nonparticipation, if any, would be local decisions. However, participation rates lower than 95 percent will affect school classifications in future years.”

Small groups of parents in many school districts, including Providence, Scituate, Cumberland and Tiverton, have been appealing to educators for permission to opt out.

Providence Supt. Susan F. Lusi said for those who do opt out, college and career readiness will be based on grades and other tests.

PARCC will test “the kind of close analytical reading and the ability to solve multipart problems [that] people are looking for both as employers and in higher education,” she said.

And without the building block of improved student skills before they leave high school, efforts to develop the action plan long sought by Di Pasquale and others will remain stuck in neutral, much like the economy of the state.

“What all of us want to see in the working world is a little more emphasis on what is necessary when you actually get out of high school or college,” said Stephen Adams, a partner at Barton Gilman, LLP, in Providence, who participated in that 2012 PBN summit. •

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