With the spring 2017 PARCC administration season set to begin in March, the consortium has made a wealth of resources available to help parents, teachers, and students all prepare for this year’s testing. Over the past two years, more than 1,300 authentic released items from PARCC assessments have been published Read more
With the new ESSA regulations requiring accountability systems based on multiple measures, a new guide from researchers at the not-for-profit NWEA provides educators with actionable steps they can begin implementing immediately. Multiple Measures Done Right outlines the seven principles of developing coherent assessment systems that go beyond compliance to support Read more
In May, a new organization called Learning Heroes released a survey with a startling finding: 90 percent of parents believe that their children are performing at “grade level” or higher in their schoolwork. Setting aside the debate over what “grade level” even means, by any reasonable definition many of these Read more
Achieve has partnered with the Center for Assessment to release a new brief to help state policymakers identify key action steps to consider as they make decisions about high school assessments. The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives states a new opportunity in how they approach high school Read more
A first-of-its-kind study has found that students who score at the “college-ready” level on the PARCC exam are well-positioned to earn good grades in college. The findings provide early evidence that the assessment does what it was designed to do: measure college readiness. The Massachusetts Department of Education commissioned Mathematica Read more
Below, two articles are excerpted that come to very different conclusions about the recent NAEP results for high school seniors. Education Week author Liana Heitin writes: High school seniors have lost ground in math over the last two years, according to the most recent scores on a national achievement test. Read more
An Education Week survey of states’ testing plans in English/language arts and math—the two subjects covered by the Common Core—found that states have continued in 2015-16 to drift away from the tests designed by the assessment corsortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, and Read more
State achievement standards represent how much the state expects their students to learn in order to reach various levels of academic proficiency. In the past, these achievement standards were used by each state to report adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind federal legislation, and are now being used Read more
Education Week author Marc Tucker describes what NCEE has learned about the design of the instructional systems used by top-performing countries and suggest ways in which U.S. states can adapt those lessons for use in their own state system under the Every Student Succeeds Act. He defines “instructional system” as Read more
A study, published in the journal Education Next, finds that since 2011, 45 states have raised the levels at which students are considered “proficient” on state tests. Thirty-six of the 45 did so within just the last two years. The report is the seventh in a series that examines states’ Read more
Now that Congress has reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and given states control over their own accountability systems, what will states do with the new flexibility? Pretty much the same thing they have been doing for the past four years, says a report released by the Council of Read more
In the past few weeks, Colorado dropped PARCC for the SAT at the high school level, and Delaware and Montana have dropped Smarter Balanced for the SAT (Delaware) and ACT (Montana). New flexibility under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes the use of college readiness exams for high school Read more
Did you know that parents and teachers can view PARCC test items from last year’s test? Almost 850 of the test questions are online in the Partnership Resource Center. This guide is designed to help you easily navigate the many test questions and related materials, including sample student responses to Read more
PARCC has announced that it will now offer states the option of buying parts of its testing system and choosing their own vendor. Previously, states could purchase only the entire system, and they had to use Pearson for test administration. This announcement comes as testing plans for 2015-16 show a Read more
Policymakers currently face major challenges when it comes to assessments. Are the assessments aligned to the state’s standards? Are students spending too much time taking tests? Should new assessments be used in school performance ratings? These questions, among others, loom large when states tackle the subject of assessment-related policy. A Read more
With the Obama administration’s signature education initiative, Race to the Top, concluded, states and districts should resist the temptation to try new reforms and should focus on improving implementation of the initiatives adopted to increase student success and close achievement gaps. A new report by Education First, a national education Read more