Monday, April 22, 2013

PARCC Is coming... A series of Updated summaries #1


Ironic that we are in the midst of MCAS season and talking about something that will be replacing it but, more and more people are curious about the new PARCC assessment and what it is all about.

This is the first in a series of Blogs that I will post to break down the long reads on PARCC into quick and basic (and hopefully clear) reads for staff.

What is PARCC?

PARCC stands for the Partnership for Assessment of College and Career Readiness. Massachusetts is a part of the 22 PARCC states that are working together to make a new assessment based on the Common Core Standards for grades 3 through 11. Yes, grades 9, 10, and 11 will be assessed using this new test. PARCC will replace the ELA and Math sessions of the MCAS as we know it. The Science portion of the MCAS will stay as is at this point.

 
PARCC Timeline:


2012-13 School Year: First year pilot/field testing and related research and data collection
2013-14 School Year: Second year pilot/field testing and related research and data collection
2014-15 School Year: Full operational administration of PARCC assessments

Basic Testing Structure:
Grades tested 9, 10, and 11

2 types of Assessments: 
Performance-Based Assessments in ELA/Literacy and Math given after 75% of the school year completed 

End of the Year Assessments in ELA/Literacy and Math given after 90% of the school year completed 

Number of testing sessions: 9 Total 
ELA/Literacy: 3 Performance based assessments and 2 end of year assessments
Math: 2 Performance based assessments and 2 end of year assessments 

Estimated time for students to complete both the assessments:
Projected to be around 10 hours each for students in grades 9, 10, and 11 

Currently, the hours we give students to complete the ELA and Math MCAS exams is similar in time

This will take students 5-9 days to test and school districts will have a window of 20 days for each assessment to complete 

The big difference: parts of PARCC will be done online which is great for timely feedback but, a challenge for schools technology wise.

For now the Science portion of the MCAS will remain the same as PARCC has not made any plans for science as of yet. 

For additional reading on PARCC see PARCC Online  and this article from EdWeek