Murphy, enough pandering on PARCC | Editorial – NJ.com

The political fight over the PARCC exam has an important new stakeholder: The class of 2019.

Some 170,000 high school students, including juniors, thought they had fulfilled the requirements to graduate. Now, thanks to a court ruling striking down the use of PARCC tests as a graduation requirement, they can’t be sure. Most have already taken the tests. Seniors are supposed to get their diplomas in June.

But the clash over this exam has left them all in limbo. It leaves their schools in chaos, too. More PARCC testing is scheduled for April, but guidance counselors and teachers don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing. Will the governor fix this right away, or leave them all twisting in the wind?

Those PARCC rules killed by the court? They’re not dead yet. Now, lawmakers might save them.

Phil Murphy has long strained to appease powerful critics of the PARCC, namely the teacher’s union, which prefers we let kids graduate without the kind of tests that hold teachers accountable.

But we need the PARCC because an A in Millburn is not the same as an A in Camden. We have to ensure that all kids succeed, not just those in affluent districts.

The Boston Globe recently tracked 93 local valedictorians and found that one in four failed to earn a college diploma in six years. Their high schools left them woefully underprepared. Some lost their scholarships. Others dropped out in frustration.

We have the same problem in New Jersey. At Essex County College in Newark, 85 percent of incoming freshmen need to take remedial math. In 2017, only 13 percent graduated. While social promotion also happens in wealthier districts, those kids have a deeper safety net.

On PARCC, Murphy is failing the neediest kids | Editorial

This is why we need an objective test. Yet because the PARCC is such a powerful diagnostic tool that can trace a student’s learning problem right down to a particular teacher’s lesson, it ran afoul of the union.

After a campaign vow to kill PARCC entirely, Murphy’s administration reached a sensible compromise: We would not eliminate it without finding a suitable replacement exam. And until then, we would pare down the test.

Students must take two PARCC exams to graduate, in math and English, or take a test like the SAT or submit a portfolio of other work. Yet a recent court decision cracked open a door for those who think we shouldn’t require any exit testing at all. They are seeking to delay and sow more chaos, in the hopes of ginning up opposition.

The education committee chairs, Sen. Teresa Ruiz and Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt, have stepped up to do the responsible thing: Grandfather in current seniors and juniors and let them graduate under today’s rules, while DOE comes up with alternative tests.

Their bill is an elegant solution that should be passed and immediately signed by Murphy. It would also build more flexibility into an outdated law on graduation testing, fixing the problem identified by the court. An alternative, union-backed bill to put a moratorium on requiring any exit exams has no chance of passing in the Legislature.

If the Murphy administration drags the fight out, when we have legislation to solve this now, it would be at the expense of kids. “Why would we delay when we have such a clear pathway toward fixing a small issue?” asks Ruiz, who wonders: “Is it based on protecting children, is it based on good policy, or is it based on politics?”

There’s no sensible reason not to back her bill. Governor, be the adult in the room.