Should school standardized testing be required by law?
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Corrected: The PARCC standardized test—administered to students in 11 states and the District of Columbia to measure whether they hit the benchmarks established by the national Common Core State Standards curriculum—has been under fire in state legislatures recently. (PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.)
On Tuesday, the Illinois House passed a bill that would allow parents to opt their children out of taking the exam, the Daily Herald reported. Also this week, a New Jersey Senate panel approved a bill that would forbid the state from withholding funding from schools that have low PARCC participation rates, NJ.com reported. And last week, the Ohio House passed a bill to eliminate the PARCC test altogether, Fox10 reported.
So this week, we would like to ask you: Should school standardized testing be required by law? Or should individual districts, schools or students decide whether or not to participate?
Answer in the comments.
Read the answers to last week’s question: What do you wish you knew when you were 22?
Featured answer:
Posted by Dud: “I wish I had known enough to beg, borrow, or steal $10,000 and stick it in a good, conservative mutual fund and let it sit there for 40 years. Money is not a savior, of course, but it takes a lot of uncertainty out of the future in our later years. Bottom line: When we are young, we do not understand the ‘gift’ that each day of life is—in our youthful ignorance we squander so much on unimportant crap.”
Do you have an idea for a future question of the week? If so, contact us.
Updated May 22 to accurately reflect the number of states utilizing the PARCC exam associated with the Common Core State Standards and clarify that the standards are not a federal government program.
