Standards

Department of Defense Schools Join PARCC Testing Consortium

By Andrew Ujifusa — October 21, 2015 1 min read
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The Department of Defense Education Activity, which operates schools for children from military families, announced Wednesday that it is joining the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) testing consortium.

The DoDEA organization, which runs 172 schools serving 74,000 students of both active-duty military personnel and Department of Defense civilians, awarded a one-year, renewable contract to Parcc Inc., the nonprofit group that manages the PARCC consortium, according to information released by the consortium. The contract is valued at over $20 million.

“We are excited about the opportunity to support the success of the children of service men and women attending Department of Defense Education Activity schools in the United States and across the globe,” Laura Slover, the CEO of Parcc Inc., said in a statement announcing PARCC’s addition of the DoDEA.

DoDEA operates schools in seven states, 11 countries, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

The PARCC exam is aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Ten states and the District of Columbia gave the PARCC exam as their exclusive statewide or jurisdiction-wide assessment in 2014-15, and Massachusetts gave districts the option of choosing PARCC or the previous state exam for the last school year. The addition of DoDEA comes after a series of defections from the PARCC consortium. Three of the states that gave PARCC last year, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio, won’t give the PARCC test next year, while Louisiana and Massachusetts are respectively either reducing or considering reducing PARCC’s role in statewide testing for 2015-16.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.