Here’s my new Newsworks column:
This week many of New Jersey’s students took PARCC tests, the new computer-based standardized assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards. These tests have incited no shortage of acrimony among N.J. teacher union leaders, parents, and even some school boards, as well as predictions of mass refusals to take the PARCC.
We’re only partly into the testing period (which, dire predictions aside, seems to be going just fine) but there’s one disturbing data point that may surprise NJEA and Save Our Schools-NJ, the primary groups that lobbied against the tests: most of the opt-outers are clustered in N.J.’s wealthiest districts.
Read the rest here.
