The Governing Board of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) met on September 12, 2012, including a joint session with the PARCC Advisory Committee on College Readiness. The board meets quarterly to make major policy and operational decisions on behalf of the PARCC consortium related to the overall design of the assessment system, PARCC’s procurement strategy, and other significant issues.
The PARCC consortium is made up of 23 states and the District of Columbia. Nineteen of those states have committed to participate only in PARCC and administer the assessments in the 2014-2015 school year. The K-12 chief state school officers from those 19 states serve on the Governing Board. The September 12 meeting included an open, public session and an executive session.
One of the more interesting topics discussed was the desire to pursue comparable performance levels with the other assessment consortium, Smarter Balanced (SBAC), including the following:
- Comparable assessment policies (e.g. accommodations and inclusion) and shared definitions for relevant student characteristics (e.g. English language learners);
- Comparable definition for college and career readiness;
- Comparable policy and content level performance level descriptors for the level that indicates readiness (or being on track to readiness) for grades three through eight and high school;
- Comparable cut scores that yield equivalent results in terms of performance level classification for the level indicating readiness (or being on track to readiness) for grades three through eight and at high school; and
- Collaboration on research/validation studies to link the scales of PARCC and SBAC assessments, and to examine how performance on these assessments relate to postsecondary outcomes;
- Endorsing these recommendations
To learn more about PARCC, visit www.parcconline.org or follow the consortium on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PARCCPlace.
