Boston May Swap MCAS For PARCC In Most Schools
BOSTON (CBS) — There might be no MCAS test for elementary and middle school students in Boston this spring.
The school committee will consider a proposal Wednesday night to replace MCAS for grades 3-8 with the PARCC exams, a testing system that's been developed by several states, including Massachusetts.
The PARCC exam, which stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is designed to better evaluate critical thinking skills and can be taken online.
"Our new academic standards really grow students all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade to get them ready for college and careers," Boston Public Schools spokesman Lee McGuire told WBZ NewsRadio 1030. "PARCC measures that, and MCAS, it doesn't measure it quite as well."
The school system has already gotten positive feedback from students who took PARCC as part of a pilot program, McGuire said.
"Students who took it online said that for an assessment test, it was actually OK," he said.
Boston 10th-graders would not be affected by the potential change; they'd still have to pass the MCAS to graduate.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens reports
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