US Dept of Ed Wanted Much More Testing from PARCC and SBAC
On February 20, 2015, I wrote a post on the two Common Core State Standards (CCSS) federally-funded assessment consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), and the setting of PARCC and SBAC cut scores using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The following post was originally a comment written by veteran Cincinnati arts teacher, Laura Chapman.
I value Chapman’s commentary because she has years of professional experience from which to draw, and she is a relentless, insightful researcher.
Here, Chapman offers noteworthy detail regarding US Department of Education (USDE) intentions regarding PARCC and SBAC, and how those now-years-old, USDE consortium testing ambitions will not be realized.
In short, USDE could not have all of the testing that it really wanted. Imagine that.
Chapman writes:
I worked on the first and second NAEP tests in the visual arts, vintage 1970s. The subject has no deep tradition of testing and serious issues in thinking through the role of talent and education in achievement. The most useful part of two rounds of NAEP tests in the visual arts was the background information, including the dismal record of access to instruction in and beyond school.
That said, I have also looked at the background on the CCSS and federal funding for PARCC and SBAC tests. USDE had a test-funding plan for the CCSS in April 2010, before the CCSS were published in June. By September 2010, grants were awarded to the PARCC and SBAC groups to begin test development at roughly $300 million total.
Then out of the blue, the two consortiums applied for supplementary funds for curriculum work needed to do the test development. That was a huge snafu in US Dept of Ed Wanted Much More Testing from PARCC and SBAC | deutsch29: