Assessment

PARCC Shortens Its Tests

By Catherine Gewertz — May 21, 2015 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

PARCC has been taking more than a little heat about its test. The Ohio House cut funding for it. Colorado lawmakers gave 11th graders a pass from it. Chicago wanted to yank the common-core-aligned test from 90 percent of its schools, but caved under pressure from the feds. And that doesn’t even count the mounting numbers of students opting out of the test.

Now the consortium has announced that the 2015-16 version will be 90 minutes shorter, and will be given in one 30-day window, instead of broken into two (one for the performance tasks and another for the short-answer end-of-year component).

PARCC leaders say they’re trying hard to respond to the concerns they’ve heard from the field. Teachers and principals welcome the lesser burden on students, and say the redesigned test will certainly be less of a scheduling and manpower challenge. Industry watchers know that the revisions will calm only some of PARCC’s opponents.

I’ve got all the details in a story on our website. Check it out.


Get Curriculum Matters delivered to your inbox as soon as new posts are published. Sign up here. Also, for news and analysis of issues at the core of classroom learning.

Related Tags:

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