Reading & Literacy

Public Comment Opens on Draft Common-Core Test-Accommodations Policy

By Catherine Gewertz — January 17, 2013 1 min read
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The public-comment period has opened on two key pieces of a policy that will govern how accommodations are designed for tests on the Common Core State Standards.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, has posted two portions of a forthcoming accommodations manual on a special page of its website. The two draft policies deal with calculator accommodations for its mathematics test, and reading accommodations for its English/language arts test. The test, as you probably know already, is slated to be given in 2014-15.

PARCC, one of the two consortia of states designing tests for the common standards, is soliciting feedback on these pieces of its accommodations manual through Feb. 4. It will seek feedback on another portion, dealing with writing accommodations, in the coming weeks. The complete manual, which will include far more, will be put out for comment this spring.

For a refresher, read our earlier blog post about these two pieces of PARCC’s accommodations policy. We reported some praise for the draft policies, but also some serious concerns about their potential to narrow the field of children eligible for accommodations on tests.

The page of PARCC’s website that contains the draft policies also has links to a graphic showing what they cover and what will be covered in the forthcoming, broader manual. It also links to a white paper co-authored by Martha Thurlow that helped shape the policies. Last but not least, there is a link to the online tool that will collect public comment.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Curriculum Matters blog.