Lake Forest High School saw its composite score on the PARCC test drop from 54 percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations to 25 percent year-over-year, but Superintendent Mike Simeck suggests that’s due to the test not being useful to students.
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC test, was administered to high school juniors in the spring of 2015 and 2016. The latest round of scores were released last week.
On July 11, the Illinois State Board of Education decided to eliminate the PARCC test at the high school level.
“Students and their parents didn’t see (PARCC) as having a bearing on their child’s future as they could clearly see on the ACT,” Simeck said. “The participation rate, despite our best efforts, was low and went lower.”
The math portion of the test was not taken by 109 students at Lake Forest High School, while the English portion of the test was not taken by 393 students, according to test data.
Simeck speculates the low participation rate was largely due to the fact that colleges don’t accept PARCC as an entrance test like they do with the SAT or ACT. Likewise, he speculates those students who did take the PARCC weren’t invested in doing well.
“The scores reflect not their abilities, but more often than not that is an assessment that wasn’t worth their time and effort,” Simeck said.
In contrast, the average ACT score for the class of 2016 at Lake Forest High was 26.4 out of a possible 36. The state average is 20.6.
The district has other issues with PARCC. The test was only administered to portions of the student body.
“It wasn’t a representative sample,” Simeck said.
Also the timing of results made it difficult for Lake Forest to make use of the results during the school year, Simeck said.
In Lake Forest District 67, PARCC composite scores – math and English combined – went from 65 percent meeting or exceeding last year, to 61 percent this year. Simeck said teachers and administrators “have not reached conclusions with those results” although he expects a report to the Board of Education in December. The PARCC test will continue to be administered to third through eighth grade students.
In Lake Bluff District 65, composite scores on the PARCC for third to eighth graders are down from 70 percent to 66 percent meeting or exceeding.
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“I’m disappointed in that,” said Superintendent Jean Sophie. “We’ve been increasing yearly.”
Sophie said administrators have been meeting with math teachers to analyze what areas of math students have had the most trouble with, making changes in the curriculum and creating individual interventions for individual students.
“I believe it’s an anomaly,” Sophie said. “While it might not be statistically significant, it’s significant to me and the school district. It’s something we’re working on.”
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