By JEFF SOMERS
MELROSE — Student assessment and testing were the main topics of discussion at Tuesday’s School Committee meeting.
The Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning of Melrose Public Schools, Dr. Margaret Adams, spoke to the committee at length on how Melrose schools can more effectively cater to particularly gifted students, as well as a new standardized test that could replace the MCAS as early as 2016 for grades 3 – 8.
The committee voted in favor of Dr. Adams proposal for having assessment tests for advanced students reduced from grades 3 – 7 to grades 5 – 7. In the 2012 – 2013 years, 48 students from grades 3 – 7, who were chosen by parents and teachers, were assessed for gifted testing, and in the 2013 – 2014 year, 17 were chosen. Based on the scores, selected students were placed in advanced courses in grades 6 – 8.
Since there are no advanced classes for students in grades 3 – 5, Adams felt that the cost spent on test materials, the assessment of the tests by the teachers, and test organization and planning by administrators was not worth the finances spent. She suggested that having an Academic Facilitator or Library Media Specialist at the elementary level might be a more reasonable option.
The other topic Dr. Adams discussed, was replacing the much debated over MCAS test with a new and innovative assessment test known as the PARCC test.
The PARCC test, which stands for the Partnership for Readiness for College and Careers, would, according to Dr. Adams, serve as a more efficient and accurate assessment. According to Dr. Adams, PARCC takes a more detail oriented approach to testing, which focuses in greater depth on text analysis, readings and evidence for answers, as opposed to the more rigid “wrong or right” style that the MCAS has become known for. Dr. Adams said that this test would allow teachers to more clearly see how students actually think and apply their knowledge.
The test would replace the MCAS in Math and English, leaving the MCAS to provide the Science section of the test. If the PARCC test comes into effect it will likely ease the minds of a long line of MCAS critics.
Mayor Robert J. Dolan wrote in a blog this week:
“If you are old enough not to be in school any more, you have probably noticed that schools have changed quite a bit since your day—whether that was the Baby Boom times of the 1960s or as recent as last year.
“Gone are the days of memorizing times tables and sitting quietly in neat rows. Even recent developments like the standard testing requirements are changing, as schools shift from MCAS to PARCC.
“Schools have changed for a very simple reason: The world has changed. In fact, some experts estimate that 65% of today’s elementary-school students will end up in jobs that don’t exist yet.
“‘We are preparing kids for a world we cannot predict,” says Superintendent of Schools Cyndy Taymore. “How do we best equip them for that world? We are trying to give them problem-solving skills. There is not a career they will go into that does not expect problem-solving skills.”’
“When adults ask why the schools have changed so much, Taymore suggests they think about what they do on a daily basis, and how much it has changed from what they prepared to do in college.
“In our next series of posts, we will look at some very concrete examples of how schools have changed, and how Melrose teachers are preparing their students for an unpredictable future: Why are class sizes smaller than when I was a kid? Whatever happened to multiplication tables? How do teachers use computers and tablets in the classroom? Are our children learning ‘the basics’?
“What would you like to know? Send your questions to my assistant, Brigid Alverson, at balverson@cityofmelrose.org, and we’ll do our best to answer them.”
