Not another task force

WHO SAYS the legislative session is all about tax cuts and limiting tax dollars for lobbying and making sure doctors are in the room before abortions are performed and expanding drug courts and improving the parole system? Sometimes there’s a bad idea at the Ledge.

Monday’s paper had news of a really bad one: One of the geniuses at the Ledge has come up with the idea of killing a standardized test that goes by the initials PARCC, which stands for Partnership for Assessment something-or-theother. Suffice it to say it’s a national test, so kids in Arkansas can take it this year and their scores compared to those of other students in other states. So we’ll all know how our kids are doing in comparison to those elsewhere.

Only we won’t if a state rep named Mark Lowery gets his way. His bill, HB 1241, would drop the test at once, and for bad measure the bill would have the governor appoint a Task Force (that’s a glorified name for still another committee) to, ahem, Determine The Best Assessment Tools For Their Subject Areas. Which is educanto for doing pretty much nothing.

It’s as if a standardized test isn’t a good enough assessment. Especially a test that will be taken by students from all over the country.

Didn’t we go through all this before—many years ago? Remember when Arkansas had its own test, its own standards, and gosh, look how many kids did so well! Then, when the students were given standardized tests so their scores could be compared to those of kids in other states, suddenly our kids didn’t look so smart. That’s what comes of having standards low enough so that just about every kid can meet them with plenty of room to spare. Better to have higher standards—not to mention comparable standards.

What’s not needed is yet another time-wasting yawn-fest of a Task Force that mainly puts off any real standards for our kids.

Conclusion: Keep the standards, keep the tests. Nix the Task Force—and this bill.