To the editor:, Over the past three months, Princeton Charter School staff, board members and some parents have touted the charter school’s 2015 PARCC standardized test scores as a justification for expansion, and have used those scores to criticize the Princeton Public Schools, and particularly the John Witherspoon Middle School. Leaving aside the many ethical problems with this approach, it is also highly problematic methodologically., First, as multiple studies have documented, standardized test scores are very strongly correlated to parental income and educational attainment. In fact, Seton Hall Education Professor Chris Tienken and his colleagues have successfully predicted students’ standardized test scores with more than 80 percent accuracy, based solely on the students’ demographic information. On average, students who are low income, have special needs, or are English Language Learners score lower on standardized tests. Princeton Charter School educates no English Language Learners, virtually no low income students, and very few special needs students., Second, there is no useful data in one year of scores from a new test that has not been validated for accuracy or reliability and that has extraordinarily high refusal rates. The 2015 PARCC was the first administration of that test. Test refusal rates across the state, including in Princeton, were very high. For example, at John Witherspoon Middle School, up to 22 percent of the students opted out of PARCC tests. These high refusal rates made the PARCC results for Princeton Public Schools meaningless. This is also why the 2015 PARCC was not used by the NJ Department of Education for any consequential purposes., Third, while administrators and students across New Jersey’s public schools understood that 2015 was an experimental year for PARCC, and treated it as such, that was not the case at charter schools. The Christie Administration evaluates charter schools primarily on the basis of their standardized test scores, which has led to an emphasis on test scores and extensive test preparation at most charter schools. In contrast, PPS PARCC preparation was very minimal and consisted primarily of familiarizing students with the new test’s online format. (As a parent of a JW student at the time, I was very happy that PPS chose to focus classroom time on real learning rather than drilling for a test that the NJ Department of Education had admitted was inconsequential.), Fourth, comparing test results on the PARCC to NJASK (the standardized test that PARCC replaced), is not methodologically feasible. Yet that is precisely the comparison built into the data that PCS touted. PARCC and NJASK tests are structured, administered and scored differently and cannot be compared with any credibility, especially given all the other concerns already noted., Parents who evaluate schools on the basis of standardized test scores may wish to review the NJ Department of Education’s prior years’ school performance reports, which show that the John Witherspoon Middle School performed much better than the Princeton Charter School relative to other schools with similar demographics and relative to the state as a whole., Those parents also may be interested in an analysis conducted by Professor Bruce Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. Professor Baker analyzed five years of NJASK test performance for all the K-8 schools across New Jersey, controlling for student demographics and resource levels – factors that we know impact test results. Professor Baker found that all five K-8 Princeton Public Schools outperformed the Princeton Charter School. That analysis is available at: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/ed-writers-try-looking-beyond-propaganda-press-releases-for-success-stories/, Julia Sass Rubin, Princeton, The author is an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, where she teaches and writes about education policy.
