Still PARCC-ing

In the wake of several withdrawals from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), leaders at the testing consortium recently gathered to confirm the strong commitment of states remaining in the group, writes Catherine Gewertz in Education Week. PARCC officials announced that 14 states and the District of Columbia have committed to field-testing the PARCC assessment in the spring of 2014: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. Four PARCC states have not reached that level of commitment: Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, and in fact Indiana has already announced it will drop out. Pennsylvania, another state not mentioned, intends to withdraw from PARCC but has not yet completed paperwork required to do so. Yet Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester points to the fact that not only are 14 states and D.C. committed to field tests, they're also committed to using the PARCC exams when they debut in spring of 2015. To bolster PARCC's claim of strong member support, four state commissioners of education and one higher education representative took turns praising the quality and value of the assessment and the involvement of teachers in creating it. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP) is an education support organization that works as a collaborative partner in high-poverty communities