PARCC Consortium Awarded Race To The Top Assessment Funds

The U.S. Department of Education today awarded “Race to the Top” assessment funds to the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC or Partnership) for the development of a K-12 assessment system aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics. These funds will help states which have joined the Partnership – including New York – to dramatically increase the number of students who graduate high school ready for college and careers.

New York is one of 11 governing states that will lead the 26-state Partnership in assessment development.  The other states include: Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Tennessee and the District of Columbia. 

"The Board of Regents and I are honored that New York is a member of the Governing Board of the consortium," said New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner.   "With this funding we will design the new measures of student growth that are needed to support the next generation of accountability systems under the Race to the Top reform agenda.  We’re going to evaluate what students are learning throughout the academic year, using performance-based assessments and the latest computer innovations.  Doing this will help ensure that our children graduate high school prepared for college and careers."

The goal of PARCC is to create an assessment system that will ensure students graduate college and career ready from high school. The proposed assessment system will be computer-based and will measure student progress at key times during the school year, rather than on one test at the end, to allow for instructional adjustment and extra support to students who need it. To ensure college and career alignment, higher education systems and institutions in all PARCC states, nearly 200 in total, have signed up to help develop the new high school tests. The goal will be for those institutions, and the nearly 1,000 campuses they represent, to honor the results of the new assessments as an indicator of students’ readiness to take first year credit-bearing courses.

PARCC selected Achieve to play a key role in coordinating the work of the Partnership, leveraging the organization’s deep experience in developing educational standards, including helping develop the Common Core State Standards, and its experience leading multi-state assessment development efforts anchored in college- and career-ready goals.

"We are pleased that the Department selected PARCC for award today," said Mike Cohen, Achieve’s President.  "As a long-time advocate of the college- and career-ready agenda, Achieve is well positioned and ready to work with the PARCC states and all stakeholders to achieve the historic goal of the Partnership’s proposal – an assessment system that will measure, across state lines, student achievement that’s aligned to college and career readiness for all. This work promises to not only change assessments as we know them but, over time, to improve student achievement."

For a summary of the proposal, go to www.achieve.org/PARCCsummary.

To learn more about Achieve’s college- and career-ready agenda, visit www.achieve.org.