The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers Governing Board approved several adjustments to the new online assessments Wednesday, but districts must wait until the state finalizes the changes before planning for next year's tests.
The board voted to reduce the amount of overall testing time for students, reduce the number of units, and consolidate the two testing windows. The board consists of state education commissioners and superintendents.
PARCC tests are one of two options in wide use to assess students of their knowledge of material covered under the Common Core State Standards. The consortium administered tests to 5 million students in 11 states and the District of Columbia during the 2014-15 school year.
Plans initially began for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to administer tests to students in 24 states, but the number of states has dropped to 15 as others also consider discontinuing their ties. The tests by both groups are designed to test on Common Core material and assess whether students are "college and career ready."
The PARCC Governing Board decided to decrease the amount of testing time for students by about 90 minutes overall. Students will take 60 minutes less test time in mathematics and 30 minutes less in English language arts. Changes are also being made to create more uniformity in time lengths of each test unit.
The total number of test units is expected to decrease by two or three for almost all students. States are still determining the final configurations of math units.
"We don't see those announcements and know how we're going to react immediately," said Brad Sullivan, Fountain Lake director of curriculum instruction. "We see how it's going to look when it gets to us."
The board approved the consolidation of the two testing windows for math and English language arts. Performance-based assessments and end-of-year tests were given at two different times this school year about a month apart. The PBA window was conducted in the early spring and EOY tests were administered in the late spring.
The new testing window will be up to 30 days and extend from roughly the 75 percent mark to the 90 percent mark of the school year. A release from PARCC said most schools will be able to complete testing within one or two weeks during the window, depending on their schedules and the availability of computers.
Jennifer Lyle, Jessieville Middle School counselor and district test coordinator, said coordinators will still be tasked with a heavy workload due to the nature of testing, but the amount of work will naturally decrease with the test reductions.
"Doing it twice takes double the work and time," Lyle said. "We are much happier with testing just once. Also, the second testing time ran into other tests that we had scheduled within the district."
Reductions were made in the English language arts portion of tests last year after field tests. About 1 million students field tested the PARCC assessments a year ago.
Schools must now wait for the final details of the testing window and schedule to be announced by the Arkansas Department of Education. Districts may have to adjust their calendars as well. The schedules for the next school year have been approved by many schools while waiting for the testing details.
"It will still take at least four to five days, even giving two units per day, for each grade," said Dana Gregory, Lake Hamilton Junior High counselor and district test coordinator. "That will spread out over the weeks, because you can't test all of the grades at the same."
Hope Allen, the state director of student assessment, contacted district testing coordinators Thursday and said the ADE plans to provide the necessary details to schools this week.
Local on 05/24/2015