Miss. withdraws from Common Core testing

Mississippi will sever its ties from the controversial Common Core testing consortium known as PARCC, according to a press release sent Friday by the state Board of Education.

The education board voted earlier to withdraw from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers consortium amid anti-Common Core and anti-PARCC sentiments by some of the state's top political leaders.

Despite withdrawing from PARCC, Mississippi still has Common Core, which it calls "Mississippi's College- and Career-Ready Standards."

Both Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have called for a repeal of Common Core and the Common Core-aligned assessments developed by PARCC and given to students at the end of the school year.

Two bills introduced this week by Speaker of the House Philip Gunn also propose to do away with PARCC and Common Core.

State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright serves on the PARCC board, along with the education leaders of other member states. It's unclear if she will resign from that position due to the move.

Education leaders said in the press release they will issue a request for proposals inviting other entities to provide assessments starting in the 2015-2016 school year.

"The new RFP process will give the state the opportunity to seek competitive, multi-year bids," said John R. Kelly, chairman of the Board of Education, in a press release. "Our exit from PARCC will help ensure the process is open and transparent. Any assessment vendor may submit a bid for the contract provided they meet the RFP requirements and their assessment measures what students are learning in our classrooms."

Bryant and Reeves praised the decision in separate statements.

"I'm encouraged this will give us the opportunity, like many other states, to competitively bid-out our student assessments, while maintaining the highest standards without federal interference," Bryant said.

The Department of Education late last year signed a one-year emergency contract with Pearson to deliver the 2014-2015 assessment. MDE had tried to sign a multi-year contract with Pearson, but the state Personal Service Contract Review Board rejected it.

Mississippi adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010 along with 45 other states. The standards define what K-12 students must learn but leave the curriculum decisions to the local school districts.

School districts have been phasing in Common Core for years, but this will be the first school year in which students on those standards via the PARCC assessments.

"The State Board of Education remains fully committed to maintaining Mississippi's College- and Career-Ready Standards," Kelly said. "This is our top priority."

Kelly and Wright previously have denounced efforts to repeal Common Core and opt out of PARCC. In a joint statement issued in December, they called the standards the highest the state has ever had and lamented the massive effort it would require to implement new ones.

And they said called PARCC the "best option to measure student performance."

"Hundreds of Mississippi educators had a hand in developing the test items, and more than 88,000 students in 513 schools and 140 districts field tested the PARCC assessment last spring," that statement said. "These tests are the only assessments in the marketplace that have Mississippi's voice and input that are aligned to the state's College- and Career-Ready Standards."

Contact Emily Le Coz at elecoz@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7249. Follow @emily_lecoz on Twitter.