The states that make up the PARCC Consortium released last year’s test items to better inform and enhance instruction in the areas of mathematics and ELA (English Language Arts). These items were released in order to demystify the questions and assessment items being asked of students and for parents to Read more
The Obama administration, this past week, asked the Education Department to review its policies and determine any places where it may have contributed to overemphasis on testing and the loss of instructional time. The key actions set forth by the Administration are as follows: Financial support for states to develop Read more
Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy wants the U.S. to reform the way that it approaches its instructional core. By this, he means “the combination of state-mandated standards, curriculum frameworks, course syllabi, instructional materials, and tests and examinations that together define and measure what students Read more
Anya Kamenetz at NPR News has put together an interesting article on American public opinion on testing. The reason for her article was two recent polls, (poll released Aug. 17 by EdNext) and (poll released Aug. 24 by Gallup/PDK). These polls vary slightly in the way that they ask respondents Read more
George Washington University, a private university with just over 10,000 undergraduate students, has recently announced that they will become a test (SAT/ACT) optional college for admissions. Other colleges have been test-optional for decades, but not many with the high profile or number of students like George Washington. Other test-optional colleges Read more
2014-2015 was the first year in which states rolled out Common Core aligned, value-added tests. These tests promised to be better at evaluating the real progress (or lack of progress) that students are making than previous tests because they would be computerized and therefore able to include more interactive types Read more
Chester Finn of Education Excellence has written a post on the Common Core Watch blog where he broaches the issue that many education professionals have been contemplating but not talking openly about much: are we actually going to get anything useful out of the first batch of Common Core aligned Read more
A new report by the education reform organization Achieve finds large “honesty gaps” between state-reported proficiency rates in math and reading compared to those on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is also known as the Nation’s Report Card. The report, Proficient vs. Prepared: Disparities Between State Tests Read more
The PARCC Governing Board, made up of the state education commissioners and superintendents, voted recently to consolidate the two PARCC testing windows into one and to reduce total test time by about 90 minutes beginning in the 2015-16 school year. The vote came in response to school district and teacher Read more
Education professional Steve Peha has a new newsletter out discussing the ongoing fears and debates surrounding the Common Core. While Peha is in no way one of the more vocal and enthusiastic backers of the Common Core, he does still support it because “we may end up at least one Read more
James S. Murphy of Princeton Review, writing for The Atlantic, recently penned an article about the new SAT based on new sample questions which the College Board released. Murphy is encouraged by the changes that the SAT is making away from its obscure vocabulary focus and away from abstract essays, Read more
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessments are the product of a testing consortium attempting to provide 21st century testing to measure 21st century skills. Here is PARCC’s own description of their role: PARCC is your state’s homegrown assessment. PARCC is not a testing company Read more
Members of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Council of the Great City Schools said recently they will work to decrease the number of tests students take in elementary and secondary schools. The groups will form a task force to identify and eliminate unnecessary assessments. In a Read more
The PARCC ELA/literacy prose constructed response item rubrics have been updated with the help of educators across PARCC states to reflect lessons learned from the PARCC field test. A PCR item asks students to produce a robust written reply to a prompt. The rubrics are a voluntary resource, aligned to Read more
Earlier this summer, Achieve launched the Student Assessment Inventory for School Districts, a new tool to help school district leaders to take stock of how many assessments are administered throughout a school year and for what purposes they are given. Designed from a student perspective, the tool can be used Read more
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 Read more