New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently issued an executive order to study new PARCC tests being implemented in New Jersey. This is good news and bad news; it represents Christie’s first flinch in his march towards education reform, but it also came about because of a back room deal with State Senate President Steve Sweeney to pull more comprehensive legislation. 

While this executive order may constitute incremental process for those skeptical of the Common Core and new testing regime, it’s also another in a long series of anti-democratic measures used by Gov. Christie in education. There are reasons to suspect this task force will have little influence or few critics among it. Already, Assembleywoman Mila Jasey has criticized the Governor’s tweaking of the composition of the task force. 

The Education Law Center responded with a series of recommendations for implementation. They are worth a read, and the recommendation for open hearings would be a nice start to the process of linking education back to communities that are affected: 

— Hold public hearings: The commission should hold a series of hearings that provide opportunities for public testimony and a measure of transparency. Grassroots input from local schools and communities is essential to an honest evaluation of New Jersey’s testing landscape.

— Review the reliability and quality of the PARCC tests: PARCC, the Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness, is the federally funded consortium that is overseeing development of the new Common Core tests. The consortium has given the testing giant, Pearson Inc. — which has a long history of testing errors and mismanagement — a $1 billion contract to develop and administer the tests. PARCC originally included 24 states and the District of Columbia. But now only nine states, including New Jersey, plan to give the PARCC exams next year. The commission should develop clear criteria for quality control and public review of the PARCC exams.

— Scale back non-mandated high school testing: PARCC requires six new high school exams, each with multiple parts. This exceeds federal mandates, which require annual testing in Grades 3-8 but only once in Grades 10-12.

While the state Department of Education has proposed suspending graduation testing during the transition to PARCC, it has not yet put forward regulations to implement this policy or address the use of PARCC scores for student grades, course credit, college admissions decisions or student transcripts. The commission should review these policies, scale back plans to add a battery of end-of-course exams and remove high stakes from the PARCC high school tests.

— Document the costs of the new state mandates. New Jersey’s implementation of standards and assessments has always been tied to efforts to equitably fund our public schools. But there have not been any credible studies of the resources required to provide all students with the opportunity to achieve the Common Core’s “college and career ready” standards, even though districts are already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology for PARCC’s computer-based exams.

Raising standards without providing — or even identifying — the resources needed to deliver them sets schools and students up for failure instead of success.

— Examine the role of standardized testing in New Jersey schools: Many districts have added their own layers of testing to federal and state mandates, and PARCC is developing tests for kindergarten through second grade. The commission should document the costs and impact of this added testing and propose ways to reduce it.

A parental testing notification bill pending in the Assembly (A3077) offers ways to begin this process. Another bill pending, A3079, would ban standardized tests in Grades K-2. The commission should endorse both.

— Promote alternatives to standardized testing: Pearson’s PARCC tests will still be mostly standardized, multiple-choice exams. There are better ways to evaluate student and school progress.

The state needs to be held accountable not just for content and the dangers of its testing program, but also to the undemocratic way in which it pursues an education agenda.