Leadership Matters May 2014 working doc

ISBE leadersoffer thoughtsonPARCC issues

instructional process. It is important to consider the purpose of the assessment and how it is used. ACT is currently used for college entrance. PARCC is used to determine whether remedial coursework is needed and is given at the end of course, similar to a final exam. That’s why PARCC is a vast

In a recent sit-down interview at ISBE, Deputy Superintendent and Chief Education Officer Susie Morrison and Director of Assessment Dr. Mary O’Brian answered questions and shared their thoughts on the recent No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver and the pending implementation of the PARCCassessment. Here in Q & A form are those thoughts and insights from ISBE’s perspective:

improvement over a single point-in- time, multiple-choice test used for high stakes accountability. PARCC assesses higher order thinking skills and the application of knowledge and information that will be useful to teachers, parents and students as they approach college and career decisions

Q: What is the reason for implementing PARCC, andwhat is thegoal? Morrison: PARCC

Q: Why should students care about PARCC when it is not accepted by colleges and universities for admissionpurposes? Morrison: PARCC was not designed as an assessment for college admission and theACT is not going to go away. We have spent time meeting with people in higher education and they think PARCCwill be an important assessment for the purpose of college placement. That is important because people involved in higher education tell us that students who have to take remedial courses typically don’t end up getting degrees. If a student scores well enough on the PARCC they won’t have to take those remedial courses that cost money and take time but don’t yield college credits. That is important. PARCC also is designed in a way that schools, if they wish, could make the assessment part of the final exam. Q: If the ACT is not going away, and it iswhat colleges use for admission purposes, what role will the ACT play in the evaluation of school districtsandwill ISBEcontinue to fund it? Morrison: We have included both PARCC and ACT in our FY15 budget request. The intent is to be able to provide a transition, by still providing the test on an optional basis for all 11 th grade students. We still intend to use the ACT as part of the overall evaluation under our NCLB waiver. PARCC provides alignment withK-12 that ACT does not.

addresses the concerns we have been hearing from school districts for a long time. It is aligned to standards, moves away from a single point-in-time high stakes test to one that is useful for instruction and measuring student growth. PARCC bridges elementary and high school performance and it allows results to be returned quickly for decision making at the school level. Nationally, the trend is moving toward higher, internationally benchmarked learning standards and wewould be doing our students a disservice if we did not move in the direction of college and career readiness. (PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for CollegeandCareers). O’Brian: This is a step in the next generation of assessments. It is better standards-aligned for grades 3-11 as opposed to having ISAT for grades 3-8 that did not align with the PSAE for high school students. PARCC will provide much richer classroom data for superintendents and principals to identify strengths as well as areas to beef up instruction. We’ve never had that ability to pinpoint those areas in a specific manner. Morrison: The assessment also will provide better student performance data to inform making decisions to support students and provide intervention as needed. Q: What are your thoughts regarding the test overload issue, especially for high school juniors that may have to take PARCC, ACT, the Advance Placement (AP) and final exams all in the fourth quarter? Morrison: Testing comprises a small amount of time in comparison to the amount of time available for instruction. Assessment is also a critical part of the

Q: What about the technology issues, and how will you compare results from the online version to results from thepaper/pencil version?

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