Olive-Mary Stitt Elementary School is a collaborative school community with responsible students who are passionate, global learners.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

PARCC information

At the most recent PTA meeting we shared some information about the PARCC assessments.  Below are the highlights of that presentation. 
  • Illinois approved new learning standards in 2010. The PARCC assessments are used to measure student progress on these standards. PARCC is replacing ISAT.
  • ISAT will no longer be administered and there will be no way to compare scores between ISAT and PARCC.
  • The PARCC assessments will have two components in 2014-2015. First will be a set of performance-based (PBA) tasks such as applying concepts to solve model real-world problems taking place March 2nd - March 18th. The second component will be an end-of-year assessment (EOY) administered April 27th - May 20th. The results will be combined with the performance-based assessment to produce a student’s summative assessment score.
  • The PARCC assessments will will cover English/language arts and math. The tests align to the new Illinois State Learning Standards (based on the Common Core Standards).
    • In English/language arts, the PARCC assessments will look much deeper at student writing abilities and critical-thinking skills, for example.
    • In math, students will have to solve complex problems, show their work, and demonstrate how they solved the problem.
  • With PARCC, the state is moving to more online testing however not all grades will test online. For 2014-15, grades 3 and 6 will test online in math and reading. Grades 4, 5, 7 & 8 will be using the paper version. After this year, we will evaluate adding additional grades for online testing. 
  • Sample test items and questions are available here: http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes. This will give an idea of what the student testing experience will be like. Keep in mind, not all students will test online and some will have the paper version.
  • Additional resources for parents can be found at: http://www.parcconline.org/for-parents