The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) AACRAO:

1. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) AACRAO: Bridges to the Future San Francisco April 17, 2013 Allison Jones, Vice President of Postsecondary Collaboration Achieve

2. Academic Preparation and Expectations Gap The knowledge and skills demanded by postsecondary and employers for successful first-year students and new employees. What students are typically expected to know at the end of high school, as defined by state standards, required curriculum and assessments ≠ RESULT In many states, students can earn a high school diploma without the skills necessary for success in college and careersresulting in high remediation rates.

3. The Goal: College Access and Success • Identify a set of core competencies that represent a baseline of college and career ready academic standards • Agree upon a common definition of college and career readiness • Develop innovative assessment system aligned to the standards - • to help ensure new standards reach every classroom. And • to provide clear signals to educators, parents and students about college readiness prior to high school graduation • Establish a College and Career Ready Determination Assessment accepted and used by postsecondary faculty and administrators that guarantees student placement into entry-level, credit-bearing college courses without the need for remediation. • Provide early interventions, tools and transition courses to ensurestudents meet postsecondary goals.

4. The Common Core State Standards Identify a Set of Core Competencies that Represent A Baseline for College and Career Readiness

5. 46 States + DC Have Adopted the Common Core State Standards * Minnesota adopted the CCSS in ELA only

6. Key Advances of the Common Core ANCHORED IN COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS

7. Claims Driving Design: ELA/Literacy

8. Important to Higher Education Faculty:ELA and Literacy Standards • Colleges and universities require students to – • Analyze complex text • Conductresearch and apply that research to solve problems or address a particular issue • Identifyareas for research, narrow those topics and adjust research methodology as necessary, and evaluate and synthesize primary and secondary resources as they develop and defend their own conclusions • Standards require students to – • Conductshort, focused projects and longer term in-depth research • Identify and analyze credible information • Communicate research findings both verbally and in writing

9. Claims Driving Design: Mathematics Students are on-track or ready for college and careers

10. Important to Higher Education Faculty: High School Mathematics Standards • The high school mathematics standards: • Identify the mathematics that all students should study in order to be college and career ready • Emphasizemathematical modeling and the use of mathematics and statistics • To analyzeempirical situations, • Understandthem better, and • Improvedecisions • The standards require students to: • Apply mathematical ways of thinking to real world issues and challenges • Develop a depth of understanding and ability to apply mathematics to novel situations

11. The PARCC Assessment System: Design and Critical Advances

12. What is PARCC? • innovative assessment system • aligned to the Common Core State Standards • provides clear signals about college and career readiness prior to high school graduation

13. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)

14. PARCC Assessment Priorities • Determine whether students are college- and career-readyor on track • Provide actionabledata to inform instruction, interventions and professional development • Measure the full range of student performance, including the performance of high and low performing students • Assess the full range of the Common Core Standards, including standards that are difficult to measure • Incorporate innovative approaches throughout the system • Compare performance across states and internationally • Provide data for accountability, including measures of growth

15. Assessment DesignEnglish Language Arts/Literacy and Mathematics, Grades 3-11 2 Optional Assessments/Flexible Administration • End-of-Year • Assessment • Innovative, computer-based items • Required • Mid-Year Assessment • Performance-based • Emphasis on hard-to-measure standards • Potentially summative • Performance-Based • Assessment (PBA) • Extended tasks • Applications of concepts and skills • Required • Diagnostic Assessment • Early indicator of student knowledge and skills to inform instruction, supports, and PD • Non-summative • Speaking And Listening Assessment • Locally scored • Non-summative, required

16. Non-Summative Assessment Components Flexible • Diagnostic Assessment designed to be an indicator of student knowledge and skills so that instruction, supports and professional development can be tailored to meet student needs • Mid-Year Assessment comprised of performance-based items and tasks, with an emphasis on hard-to-measure standards. After study, individual states may consider including as a summative component • Mid-Year Assessment • Performance-based • Emphasis on hard to measure standards • Potentially summative • Early Assessment • Early indicator of student knowledge and skills to inform instruction, supports, and PD Summative assessment for accountability Non-Summative assessment

17. Summative Assessment Components • Performance-Based Assessment (PBA) administered as close to the end of the school year as possible. The ELA/literacy PBA will focus on writing effectively when analyzing text. The mathematics PBA will focus on applying skills, concepts, and understandings to solve multi-step problems requiring abstract reasoning, precision, perseverance, and strategic use of tools • End-of-Year Assessment (EOY) administered after approx. 90% of the school year. The ELA/literacy EOY will focus on reading comprehension. The math EOY will be comprised of innovative, machine-scorable items • End-of-Year • Assessment • Innovative, computer-based items • Performance-Based • Assessment (PBA) • Extended tasks • Applications of concepts and skills Summative assessment for accountability Non-Summative assessment

18. The PARCC Assessment System: Student Access and Technology

19. Promoting Student Access PARCC is committed to the following principles: • Use Universal Design principles to create accessible assessments throughout every stage and component of the assessment • Minimize/eliminate features of the assessment that are irrelevant to what is being measured, so that all students can more accurately demonstrate their knowledge and skills • Measure the full range of complexity of the standards • Use technologyto make all components of the assessment as accessible as possible • Conduct bias and sensitivity reviews of all PARCC items

20. Leveraging Technology

21. The PARCC Assessment System: Prototype Items

22. ELA Prototype Item: Grade 7 Research Simulation Task

23. High School Illustrative Sample Item Seeing Structure in a Quadratic Equation

24. Aligns to the Standards and Reflects Good Practice High School Illustrative Item Key Features and Assessment Advances The given equation is quadratic equation with two solutions. The task does not clue the student that the equation is quadratic or that it has two solutions; students must recognize the nature of the equation from its structure. Notice that the terms 6x – 4 and 3x – 2 differ only by an overall factor of two. So the given equation has the structure where Q is 3x – 2. The equation Q2 - 2Q is easily solved by factoring as Q(Q-2) = 0, hence Q = 0 or Q = 2. Remembering that Q is 3x – 2, we have . These two equations yield the solutions and .  Unlike traditional multiple-choice tests, the technology in this task prevents guessing and working backwards. The format somewhat resembles the Japanese University Entrance Examinations format (see innovations in ITN Appendix F). A further enhancement is that the item format does not immediately indicate the number of solutions.

25. Timeline: Key PARCC Milestones Summer: Item prototypes released Fall: Technology Guidance for PARCC Assessments Version 2.0 released Fall: College and Career Ready Assessments identified 2012 Winter: School Readiness Planning Guide released Spring: Item tryouts Summer:PARCC Accommodations Manual released 2013 Spring: Field testing 2014 Winter/Spring: Summative PARCC Assessments Summer: Standard setting 2015

26. The PARCC Assessment System: College and Career Readiness

27. Background: College- and Career-Ready Determination (CCRD) Policy • Two College and Career Ready Determinations: • English language arts/literacy • Mathematics • Students who receive a CCRD will have demonstrated the academic knowledge, skills, and practices necessary to enter directly into and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing courses at public postsecondary institutions without the need for remediation. • Students who achieve the CCRD will be guaranteed exemption from remedial course work in that content area. • The PARCC Governing Board and ACCR approved the final policies during a special October 25, 2012 session. • Policies are located at www.parcconline.org/parcc-assessment-policies

28. Background: Policy-Level Performance Level Descriptors • PARCC states will use 5 achievement levelsfor grades 3-8 and HS in ELA/literacy and mathematics • Each of the proposed performance levels includes: • Policy claims, which describe educational implications for students at a particular performance level. • General content claims, which describe academic knowledge and skills students across grade levels performing at a given performance level are able to demonstrate. • Level 4 will be the threshold for earning the College and Career Ready Determinations on the designated high school assessments

29. Standard-Setting/Validation Studies of the CCRD The following statement was approved for use to inform standard-setting (determining cut scores for PARCC performance levels) and to conduct future studies to validate the efficacy of the CCR Determinations. • Students who earn a PARCC College- and Career-Ready Determination by performing at a Level 4 in Mathematicsand enroll in College Algebra, Introductory Statistics, and technical courses requiring an equivalent level of mathematicshave approximately a 0.75 probability of earning college credit by attaining at least a grade of C or its equivalent in those courses. • Students who earn a PARCC College- and Career-Ready Determination by performing at a Level 4 in ELA/literacy and enroll in College English Composition, Literature, and technical courses requiring college-level reading and writing have approximately a 0.75 probability of earning college credit by attaining at least a grade of C or its equivalent in those courses.

30. CCRD: Placement NOT Admission A College and Career Ready Determination on the PARCC assessments indicate: • Mastery of the core competencies in the Common Core State Standards identified by postsecondary education faculty as prerequisites for and key to success in entry-level, credit-bearing courses in English and mathematics • Readiness for placement into entry-level, credit-bearing courses in ELA and mathematics A College and Career Ready Determination will not: • Determine admission to college or university • Replacecollege/university tests to place students into higher level mathematics and English courses • Address non-traditional students who delay enrollment

31. PARCC Assessment Priorities from the Postsecondary Perspective • Assess the full range of the Common Core Standards. • Guaranteestudents placement into entry-level, credit-bearing courses in ELA and Mathematics without remediation by developing a College and Career Ready Determination recognized by postsecondary institutions. • Provide clear signals to students about college and career readiness prior to high school graduation. • Incorporate these indicators into a system of tools and transition courses, aligned to the PARCC assessments, to support students in meeting postsecondary goals.

32. Ensure the CCRD is embraced by postsecondary faculty and administrators by continuing to validate the assessment through targeted research and evaluation.

33. PARCC research strategy is to collect evidence to inform, establish, and evaluate the success of methods, practices and processes to ensure that necessary conditions and outcomes are satisfied to ensure the assessment system is implemented with fidelity. To set college-ready performance standards on the high school assessments, PARCC will use evidence from research such as: Concurrent validity studies Compare performance on PARCC with ACT/SAT/COMPASS/Accuplacer Predictivevalidity studies Connect success of students on PARCC to performance in first-year courses Judgmentstudies Rate importance of CCSS standards and test items in comparison with first-year course content Alignment studies Examine relationship between first course content and content PARCC measures Research Strategy for Validation of CCRD

34. Local and state engagement in the development, acceptance, and adoption of the PARCC assessments

35. Development and Adoption of the PARCC Assessments • Requires creation of state mechanisms and infrastructures to • facilitate postsecondary input into PARCC’s work and • postsecondary adoption of the PARCC CCRD as an indicator • of college readiness: • Governance Plan • State Specific Action Plan • Collaborative Platforms/Mechanisms of Communication

36. Development and Adoption of the PARCC Assessments • Align first-year courses with CCSS • Analyze consistency in the definition of 1st-year, credit bearing courses in mathematics courses across colleges and states (range is from intermediate algebra to calculus) • Establish consistent policies across postsecondary systems in your state about: • Placement • College readiness standards • College credit articulation • Align teacher preparation and alternative certification programs with content and pedagogy of the CCSS

37. Aligning Teacher Preparation Programs 37 37 • To strengthen alignment between pre-service and in-service training, higher education and K-12 can collaborate to create professional development around the standards by: • Involving higher education faculty members in the fields of arts and sciences, mathematics, and education in the development of professional development modules • Designing modules might include tasks, lesson plans, and standards mapping exercises • Coordinating development of these modules allows for the possibility of faculty at partner institutions of higher education to administer or teach the modules to their K-12 peers

38. Professional Development for College of Education Faculty 38 38 • Teacher educators should look to the Common Core State Standards to signal what their own students should know and be able to do to succeed as effective teachers • Alignment between teacher preparation programs and professional development for in-service teachers is integral to create continuity of student and teacher expectations. • Higher education institutions might consider encouraging faculty participation in professional development activities through a stipend, course release time, or other positive incentives and recognition.

39. Tools and transition courses

40. Develop Cross-Sector Interventions • In collaboration with K-12 counterparts: • Determine the use of the PARCC assessment in identifying struggling students • Develop a system to support identified students during their senior year • Build unified State Longitudinal Data Systems and define common metrics to link K12 and postsecondary student performance • Support students through cross-sector intervention: • Dual enrollment/Early College • Transition/bridge courses • Remediation reform

41. Southern Regional Education Board Transitional Course Project • SREB has collaborated with PARCC to welcome state teams: • To work with 14 participating states to develop 12th grade transition courses based on the CCSS, • To field test model the model 12th grade transition courses, • To ensure that state and local educators remain involved in the process of developing aligned interventions, and • To work with state policy-makers to develop policies that support the statewide implementation of these courses.

42. Importance to Postsecondary Education

43. Benefits of CCSS to Higher Education • Better information about the preparation of incoming students • Better use of 12th grade • Improved preparation of incoming students – from all states • Increased academic rigor in entry-level, credit-bearing courses • Reduced remediation rates • Increased funding may be redirected to support credit-bearing courses • Increased degree attainment rates • Increased capacity – colleges can admit more students • Betteroptions for academic interventions to ensure students remain on-track to college readiness

44. Resources Available “Connecting the Dots”, written by PARCC Higher Education Leadership Team members, and December 2012 CHANGE Magazine article “The Common Core State Standards: A Vital Tool for Higher Education”, written by Allison Jones of PARCC and Jaci King of SBAC, are available at www.parcconline.org.

45. Resources To Come Higher education-focused message card that describes key messages on the front… …and gives stakeholders more information about PARCC and the role of and benefits to higher education on the back.

46. Allison Jones ajones@achieve.org Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers www.parcconline.org www.achieve.org/PARCC