Group items tagged

If you think there is too much emphasis on testing now take a look into the future. A couple of years down the road both the full implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the PARCC assessments will drop down out of the clouds.

Last spring, when I was teaching at a small school in the Bronx, I caused an unnecessary ruckus by posting my thoughts about a presentation my staff received on the looming impacts of PARCC and Common Core implementation. The post was shared by Gotham Schools, in the Digest for Grassroots Education, and was disseminated to many UFT chapter leaders. I discovered soon afterward that my words were seriously concerning to a number of senior DOE employees, including, apparently, Chancellor Walcott and Deputy Chancellor Suransky.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, has released its final content frameworks for the common standards. And the newsiest thing about the document is this: The consortium is going to create content frameworks for grades K-2.

"In a move seen by some activists as a concession to Chicago's strong anti-testing movement, Chicago Public Schools won't administer the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a test required by federal mandate as part of the new Common Core curriculum. Instead, the district will test only 10 percent of its 664 schools."

Changes to the state's testing program could leave public- schools kids in grades 3 through to 11 taking as many as nine exams per year in English and math - more than four times the current number, officials said yesterday. The potential jump comes from New York's participation in a federally funded consortium of 25 states that's seeking to make exams computer-based, more challenging and administered several times per year. The latest consortium plan calls for students to be tested as many as four times annually in math and five times a year in reading, starting in 2014.

The two consortia-which, you probably recall, are working with federal Race to the Top money-have released documents that shed a bit more light on what the tests might look like when they're fully operational in 2014-15. We say "might" because there is a very long road to travel between these documents and the final tests-lots of tweaking, field-testing, revising, reviewing. But the accumulating stack of documents offers interesting glimpses.

A total of 1325 elementary, middle and high schools and 123 districts statewide have been identified for improvement under the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.  Of the identified schools, 1173 will receive Title I funds in 2011-12 and are required to offer extra help to eligible low-income students; 416 of these Title I schools must also offer public school choice (as appropriate) to all enrolled students. 

Video of Commissioner King's presentation at the NYSCOSS Fall Conference on Superintendent Leadership and the Regents Reform Agenda.

Presentation to NYS School Superintendents.