The fatally flawed Smarter Balanced Assessments didn’t even hit your child’s desk before the New Hampshire Department of Education was pushing for a different assessment for your children.
The new experiment on your children is called the PACE assessment. The PACE assessments will replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment in some of the elementary grades but maintain the emphasis on testing the non-academic dumbed down workforce skills and Common Core standards.
“In 2014-2015 Sanborn Regional, Souhegan, Epping and Rochester began implementing PACE. In 2015-2016 Concord, Pittsfield, Seacoast Charter and Manchester’s Parker Varney Elementary School began implementing PACE.”
But does PACE offer parents information on whether their child knows Math or English? We know that the Smarter Balanced math assessment was fatally flawed. If we are going to replace one bad assessment with another assessment, shouldn’t we be assured that this one will not have the same baggage as the last one?
At least parents could refuse to let their children take the Smarter Balanced Assessment. With the PACE assessments, and under the Competency Based Model, students do not move forward unless they pass their competencies. Will your child be able to move forward if you refuse the PACE assessment? Or is this a way to FORCE your compliance?
Will the NH Dept. of Ed. acknowledge a parent’s right to refuse but then deny a student the ability to move forward in their class if they do not take the PACE assessments?
To make matters worse, we are finding examples of other states using other “Common Core” assessments that parents are finding, reduce their ability to learn the actual academic content and thereby minimize their chance of acquiring the knowledge to move into engineering careers.
“Randy Houchins and John Pendergraff, two mechanical engineers, gave their testimony this week before the Texas State Board of Education. Both of these fathers have children in Texas public schools, and both men are very adamant that the Common Core process standards have managed to creep into their children’s math materials and STAAR tests. Common Core is illegal in Texas.”
Common Core is what the New Hampshire Board of Education adopted in 2010. The Smarter Balanced Assessment, the new SAT and the PACE assessments are all based on the Common Core standards.
If the testing of the standards are fundamentally flawed, at least with the Smarter Balanced and the SAT, parents could refuse. Unfortunately the Common Core curriculum and instruction will still deny them a quality math education, but parents could avoid the flawed tests.
With the PACE assessment SCHEME, there seems to be a real effort on the part of the NH Dept. of Ed along with the schools that are going to adopt PACE, to FORCE YOUR COMPLIANCE.
What can parents do? Go to their local board meetings and tell them you do NOT want PACE in your district. With Smarter Balanced and the SAT’s you get to decide whether or not you want your child to take those assessments.
Ask professionals in your local communities to start analyzing the standards and assessments in your schools.
In Texas, two fathers who happen to be Engineers took time to look at the Common Core assessments and share the problems they found with the State Board of Education.
Demand to see all of the testing materials in your school and given to your children. You have a right to see these materials.
If you do not identify the problems in your child’s education now, it may be too late when they get to high school and begin looking at colleges.
We know that the Common Core Standards do not prepare children for college programs in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) field. It’s up to parents to let their school boards and elected representatives know that you expect better from them.
These kind of psychometric assessments do not measure academic knowledge. They are there to measure your child’s attitudes, dispositions, values, etc. Parents are now starting to discover that they don’t want any part of this kind of testing on their children. They simply want to know if their child can answer basic math questions.
PACE will be used as a tool to force compliance to this kind of testing so while they “experiment” on your child, it’s up to you to make sure your board knows you want NO part of this kind testing.