Chiefline 3.12.13
PARCC Releases Tool to Prepare Schools and Districts for Rigorous 21st Century Assessments
By Abby Hexter
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has announced a new planning tool and guidance for schools and districts that will help them prepare for new assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.
The PARCC assessments will include performance-based items and are being carefully crafted to enable teachers, schools, students and their parents to gain important insights into how well students are mastering critical knowledge, skills, and abilities essential for them to thrive in college and careers in ways only computer-based assessments can measure.
"Students deserve assessments that measure their readiness for the real world," said Louisiana State Superintendent John White, a member of the PARCC Governing Board. "That means every school should be a technology-rich environment, not just because of tests, but because technology is an essential component of a quality education today. Our schools in Louisiana have made this a top priority, tripling the number of technology-ready districts over the last six months."
Because of PARCC's ability to better measure student performance through technology enhanced test items, they will look very different to students. The tasks on the assessments will resemble the classroom work they do during the school year and look less like a conventional fill-in-the-bubble or short-answer test. Examples can be found by reviewing the item prototypes on the PARCC website.
Preparing for this type of assessment necessitates changes in how schools prepare. The PARCC Assessment Administration Capacity Planning Tool provides schools and districts with a calculator that supports local technology budgeting and decision-making in preparation for computer-based administration of the tests in the 2014-2015 school year. This is a tool that administrators and school leaders have requested from the consortium to help them plan for a successful test administration in two years.
PARCC is also releasing guidance that provides schools and districts with more information about the design of the PARCC assessments in English language arts/literacy and mathematics, as well as the number of testing sessions and the approximate time it will take students to complete the assessments.
For more information, visit http://www.parcconline.org.
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Meet the Chiefs
Cindy Hill
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Assumed Office 1/4/2011
Wyoming Department of Education
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