MetroWest Daily News (Massachusetts) posted an article today about the Lincoln-Sudbury School Board‘s decision to decline a chance to offer the PARCC to students next spring, sharply criticizing the standardized test that could end up replacing the MCAS in the state. The PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) is the testing that is part of the Common Core standards.

The article reports:

One board member equated the trial run of the exam as making “guinea pigs” out of students, whom he said wouldn’t see any worthwhile benefit from the dozens of hours they would put into practicing for and taking the test.

Lincoln-Sudbury, like all public high schools in Massachusetts, had a choice to administer the PARCC, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, in ninth and 11th grade later this year. The new test, which was introduced in a small pilot roll-out this past spring, was developed by a consortium of states to closely conform to the new Common Core standards adopted by most schools in the nation.

…Several committee members also bemoaned the PARCC’s potential effect of putting increased emphasis on standardized testing, arguing Lincoln-Sudbury on its own is able to come up with much more effective measures of students’ grasp of learning standards.

According to greatschools.org, Lincoln-Sudbury schools are rated a 9 out of 10. The School Board in Lincoln-Sudbury is obviously doing a good job. The median income in the town is $142,614, the median home price is $625,000, and the population is 17,673.

The School Board in the town understands that the Common Core standards have not been tested and there is no proof that they will improve the academic performance of our students. MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) testing is a proven product that has brought up the level of academic achievement of Massachusetts students. There is no reason to swap something that has proven to be effective for something that is totally untested.