PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Superintendent Jason McCandless is regretting the district's decision to pilot the PARCC test.

 

City schools entered a two-year agreement with the state for students to take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Career and College test. 

 

While the results revealed some holes in the curriculum, McCandless said the district focused too much on the logistics of administrating the test, which could have better used.

 

"This was a pilot test of a test not a test of our students," McCandless said. 

 

The state has opted against implementing the PARCC tests, which focuses on Common Core curriculum. Instead the focus will be on a revamped Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam. This year, Pittsfield students took both with the MCAS remaining the required test for graduation.

 

The MCAS data showed students in all grade levels in English and math falling short of the state's desired growth percentile and below average numbers in math and science. 

 

"We fell well below that 40th percentile in both of the recorded categories," McCandless said, adding that the district struggles with students with special needs, too. 

 

The MCAS data did show African American students outpacing all other students in percentage of advanced or proficient in English and the data shows economically disadvantaged students are within two percentage points of the state's average for English.

 

The PARCC exam, which is done online, showed worse scores than MCAS but revealed some similar focus areas. Overall, Pittsfield was far below the rest of the districts that took the exam in meeting or exceeding benchmarks in every grade and subject.

 

"We have some pretty sizable holes in our curriculum," McCandless said. "We clearly based on our scores need to rethink and perhaps reconstitute and bulk up our science program."

 

A curriculum focus will be on aligning the science lessons in middle school to transition well into the high school level. 

 

McCandless said in math the focus in the coming year will be to have a "cohesiveness" across the schools. He said in a decade there were at least two or three "wholesale" changes to the math program and each school does things differently.

 

"We don't have a unified mathematics program across our elementary schools," he said.

 

But the results weren't all bad.

 

"We are very pleased to see Crosby Elementary had an average student growth percentile of 69 in math and an average student growth percentage of 79 in fifth grade math," McCandless said. 

 

Williams scored a 74 percentile figure in mathematics and 81 percentile in fifth grade, both way ahead of state expectations of 40 percentile. Capeless, Stearns, and Williams all scored above state averages in English. And Egrement was in the 52 percentile in math and 63 for fifth-grade math.

 

"PARCC was a challenge across the board with English language arts," McCandless said.

 

Overall, the district is still ranked a Level 3 by the state, which means the city is required to receive technical assistance from the state to improve scores and show student growth. School officials work regularly with the District and School Assistance Center, McCandless said. 

 

"In spite of the many, many, challenges we have we want to be better, do better, and get better results," McCandless said.

 

Next year the school again will be taking the PARCC but McCandless doesn't feel the time and effort put into it was worth it.

 

"We will again, because this was a two-year commitment to the PARCC test, we will again being taking PARCC in the spring. We will be taking the paper and pencil version," McCandless said.

 

Financially, he estimated some $250,000 in all was used for the exam — though much of that was for purchasing computers that will continue to be useful for students. McCandless added that time spent on professional development time for the exam could have been put to better use.

 

The city invested in purchasing more computers for the exams knowing that testing was moving to all online and the PARCC helped fast-track those purchases. McCandless hopes for more computer purchases as he looks to getting closer to having one computer per student.