Asa hangs his mortar board on ACT, not PARCC

Governor exercises his power for a change in state testing of students

Maylon Rice
Maylon Rice

The fallout from the abrupt change in the way Arkansas' public schools will test student performance in April now rests squarely upon the shoulders of Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

One has to stop and ask: Why did the state's chief executive set out to do what he ultimately did -- getting the state Board of Education to reverse itself on the use of one performance test that was already implemented? Why toss out a performance testing measure that had been in place for just one year? Was it just to go in a totally different direction?

The governor seems unfazed about the switch and short on answers to why he mandated the switch.

He also seems to care less about whether the state will embark on a new student performance monitoring test this spring.

But some way, somehow, one day soon, during the Hutchinson administration, the classroom performance of Arkansas' students is going to be assessed by some test or another.

Asa better hope he has guessed correctly.

One step forward, not two steps backwards, will be his hope.

But will that be the measurement from testing?

Can we trust all this switching back and forth being made by politicians and not by professional educators?

I can only hope we don't get mired down in a battle of the vendors for the right to collect millions of tax dollars to assess the classroom performance of Arkansas' public school students.

Or, heaven forbid, do like our neighbors across the Mississippi river in the Volunteer State. Tennessee decided to give their own performance test rather than rely on some model developed on the East Coast or out on the Left Coast.

But the Tennessee House and Senate, all in for the idea, didn't see the devil in the details. The test called "TNReady" is being developed not in Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis or any other academic settings in Tennessee. No sir, the Tennessee performance test will be developed in North Carolina.

That would be like having some strip-mall office, down in a Texas bedroom community outside Dallas or Houston or Lubbock, developing a history curriculum for Arkansas students.

Was the switch about the use of computers to take the test?

Surely not computer use, the supporters of Hutchinson say. But they are really as unsure as the man on the street on exactly why our new governor wanted to ditch the PARCC test so quickly.

Hutchinson prides himself in being a cyber-governor, keen on computer coding and always, always talking about high-tech jobs.

PARCC testing is done with computers. The new, recommended ACT test from the administration is less computer driven.

Is the performance testing switch about all the uproar that a few parents, teachers and some administrators raised about the "hardness'" of the PARCC testing?

Or was all this upheaval about Common Core?

Or is it about the critics of our public schools in general?

A coalition of 16 separate school districts in Northwest Arkansas, including the Big 5 -- Siloam Springs, Springdale, Fayetteville, Rogers and Bentonville -- all signed a letter urging the PARCC be left intact. Nine other area districts also signed that document. But that, sadly, didn't faze our governor.

Now we sit and wait to see which vendor will drop by the Executive Office suite at the state Capitol to collect that big fat, taxpayer-provider contract worth millions.

Will a new test make Arkansas public school children's perform better on their classroom performance?

Asa Hutchinson, his new Education Commissioner Johnny Key, and the new members our governor is stacking on the state Board of Education sure hope so.

Others say this may be a big mistake on Hutchinson's part.

Time and future classroom performance testing may tell.

-- Maylon Rice is a former journalist who worked for several northwest Arkansas publications. He can be reached via email at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Editorial on 07/29/2015