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What are the Latest Changes to PARCC Assessments?">As educators, one of our most important responsibilities is constant assessment of student learning; this includes assessing our own evaluation instruments. We cannot ever assume our assessments perfectly measure every student learning objective, nor can we assume they are always perfectly designed. PARCC recognizes this responsibility as well and has spent these last few months carefully reviewing the data from field tests last spring. In their effort to do what is best for students, they have issued revisions to their assessments for the 2014-2015 school year. General Technology Revisions Although a more detailed “Lessons Learned” report will be issued later in September 2014, PARCC’s most recent post describe some of the general changes being made to the test after reviewing field test feedback. • Changes to the “Equation Editor” to make it clearer for students and easier to use • Placement of the ‘Submit’ button will occur only once to avoid confusion • Stronger validation and verification process to avoid loss of student testing work and data • More practice will be offered to improve functionality of technology based questions • Clearer instructions to schools on content filters to avoid problems loading videos. For more information on the technology revisions, please visit: http://www.parcconline.org/lessons-learned-part-3-technology Reductions in ELA Testing Content One of the goals of PARCC is assessing students in the best way possible; this often means fewer questions and/or passages in a streamlined approach. After reviewing teacher feedback and conducting an analysis of the proposed English Language Arts assessment, it became clear that students could still be accurately assessed using fewer questions. So, PARCC has released revised assessment guidelines for the ELA End of Year (EOY) exams. • In grades 3 – 5, students will have two fewer passages to read, which will result in 13 fewer test questions. Their new testing guidelines will include: o 1 short literary passage with 5 questions o 1 long informational passage with 8 questions o Total: 2 passage sets, 13 items • In grades 6 – 11, students will have one less passage to read, which will result in 4 fewer test questions. Their new testing guidelines will include: o 1 short literary passage with 5 questions o 1 “paired” passage set with 6 questions o 1 short informational passage with 5 questions o 1 long informational passage with 6 questions o Total: 4 passage sets, 22 items Because of the reduction of testing items, PARCC also anticipates a reduction in time needed for each portion of the test. Read More...Related Articles -
Common Core, curriculum corner, language Arts, PARCC,
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