PARCC results are in, and showing achievement gaps around the state.

By Ana Bottary

abottary@abc6.com

@anabottary

Year two of the PARCC test results are in, showing a slight improvement across the board from last year.
 
"Although it’s too early to know whether we have a trend, the scores moved in the right direction, they increased. It’s a small increase but it increased," says Dr. Ken Wagner, Commissioner of Rhode Island Department of Education.
 
Despite those small gains, a large number of students are still not anywhere close to meeting proficiency levels in Math or English.
 
"It’s clearly not good enough when 2/3 of our students are not achieving the kinds of results they need to achieve,” says Wagner.

Among the results, achievement gaps for low-income students and students of color. 16% of low-income students scored proficient in Math, where non low-income students were at 43%. Fewer than 22 percent of Latino and African American students scored proficient in English, white students were at almost 38%  state wide.

"I prefer to talk about it as an opportunity gap. Kids can do anything when they’re challenged with high expectations and given the kind of support high quality teaching,” adds Wagner.

We caught up with Darlene Netcoh, President of the Warwick teachers union. She feels the PARCC test does not accurately measure what a student is capable of doing.
 

"The way the test is constructed are very confusing to the students. Both the math and English tests have problems especially the online version,” says Netcoh.
 

The test does not count towards graduation, and Netcoh thinks that also has an impact on results.

"If the student knows it is not going to count towards graduation, then they are not going to try. The test needs to go, and something in its place needs to occur,” she adds.

©WLNE-TV / ABC6 2016