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
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
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
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
A recent report released by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) states that among those educators who have be awarded Teacher of the Year, there is a consensus that new consortia assessments, PARCC and Smarter Balance, are on the right trajectory and are an improvement on Read more
This report, conducted by the Education Commission on the States, looks at the shifting assessment landscape and identifies the types of assessment being given, at what grade levels, and for what subjects. This information was compiled in an effort to keep states and policy makers up to date on the Read more
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
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
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
We have heard much in recent years about college readiness and the role that standards, particularly the Common Core, have to play preparing students for life after high school. But we have heard much less about how institutions of higher education are thinking about the changes of the Common Core, Read more
A new article by Jason Tanz for Wired Magazine makes the argument that big data already reigns supreme, and for the most part helps us, in our lives, so why shouldn’t it do the same in education? Tanz understands that there are legitimate concerns from parents and education leaders about 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
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