The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has released a list of 10 things you should know about the PARCC assessments as you start off this school year:
- PARCC is your state’s homegrown assessment. PARCC is not a testing company – it’s a group of states working together to build better assessments. Your state’s educators and state education leaders actively participated in the design, field testing, and implementation of the new assessments. Your state’s education commissioner or superintendent is one of the PARCC Governing Board members making the decisions about the PARCC assessments. Your state is not buying a test from a vendor. Your state is in charge of your state’s tests.
- The field test last spring was very successful, and provided lessons for the first full administration next spring. More than a million students at 16,000 schools in 14 states plus the District of Columbia took the field test this past spring and with the exception of some minor glitches, as PARCC anticipated, the tryout was a huge success. PARCC has received lots of feedback from teachers, coordinators, students and others. PARCC is compiling the survey results and making adjustments. For example: PARCC is making the test manuals more concise and is working to improve the equation editor that students use to build equations for the math tests. Student feedback was generally positive. As one student said: “I like this test so much more than [the state test] because it makes you think.”
PARCC has been sharing results from the surveys in its newsletter updates. PARCC will release a full report in September with more details. PARCC will also be sharing some research studies later this fall. Stay tuned.
- Paper-based tests are available for schools that are not yet ready for the technology. The goal is for all students to benefit from computer-enhanced features. Though the majority of schools will be using the computer-based version, paper forms are available for schools that need them. However, computer-based assessments provide a faster turn-around of results to give teachers information they can use, and give students engaging real world features.
Part of the field testing research, which will be completed late this fall, looks at whether results can be compared between students who take the tests on laptop vs. tablet, desktop or paper-and-pencil.
- Teachers in your state are playing an important role in developing the assessments. Ask around – some of your colleagues have been involved in the development of the PARCC assessments, contributing to the design, reviewing test items, and reviewing reading passages.
To read the rest go to: http://www.parcconline.org/ten-things-know-about-parcc
