By DOUG REILLYLos Alamos
In November 2015, PED Secretary Hannah Skandera became chair of the Governing Board* of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Before she became chair, she was a member of the board. We’re well aware of the fuss over TESTING in New Mexico schools. We’ve been hearing a rather constant battle between the PED and NM teachers and administrators about the PARCC testing program and the grading of teachers and schools based on test scores.
This even led to lowering the grades of someschools based on the percentage of students taking the PARCC exams. However, we’ve heard/read little about Sec’y Skandera’s connection to PARCC. PARCC is owned by Pearson Education, a large conglomerate founded in Great Britain about 17 years ago.
Pearson now owns many other companies like Addison-Wesley, a large textbook publisher, and other testing companies. It employs over 40,000 people worldwide.
Sec’y Skandera has never taught in a K-12 school; she has good educational theory credentials and supports the No Child Left Behind philosophy of the GOP. She and her program remind me of a tee-shirt I once saw: “Those who can, teach; those who can’t, pass laws about teaching.”
The PARCC Consortium Governing Board makes major policy and operational decisions, including decisions related to the overall design of the assessment system, adoption of performance levels for the assessments, and modifications to PARCC’s governance structure and decision-making process, as necessary.
