“PARCC is an illegitimate measure of student achievement…”

“[Yesterday] the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) released preliminary PARCC results that purport that less than 30% of students in Illinois are meeting expectations in English and math. While ISBE has been attempting to manage public response by saying no one should be shamed by this, many will still claim that this shows that the majority of our schools, teachers and students are failing.

“Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education firmly rejects this assertion and maintains that PARCC is an illegitimate measure of student achievement and, worse yet, a blatant waste of scarce resources in a state that ranks at the bottom of the nation for state funding of public education and near the top for inequity across rich vs poor school districts.

“The PARCC governing board intentionally set PARCC's manufactured bar so that they can label the majority of students as failing.  As many national media outlets reported last month, many of those setting the cut scores disagreed about the thresholds for achievement. This is not surprising because cut scores are disputable, subjective judgments, not inherent properties of a test. There is no such thing as the ‘correct’ cut-score…”

From RYH Statement on Preliminary PARCC Results

“Raise Your Hand (RYH) is a growing coalition of parents and organizations that are collaborating to influence the public sector to enact changes that will result in appropriate, equitable and sustainable funding for public education. RYH works to create a long-term education funding framework that is not contingent on political party, election cycles or special interest agendas. Members include parents, students, teachers, administrators and community members who believe that fair and equitable funding is a core component in providing outstanding public education.”