The Alliance for Excellent Education hosted a webinar with Laura Slover of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Susan Gendron of the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), who joined Governor Wise (President of the Alliance for Excellent Education) and Pascal D. Forgione, Jr. of the K-12 Center at ETS.  The webinar provides general information on the consortia, as well as an update on the consortia's progress.  This link goes directly to the page with the embedded webinar (1.5 hours) and the downloadable supplemental materials (assessment designs, state memberships, PARCC presentation, SBAC presentation).

Frequently Asked Questions about Rhode Island joining the PARCC Consortium: why did RI join, what is RI's role as a governing state, what are the benefits to moving from NECAP to PARCC, and other common questions.

PARCC just issued its first Quarterly Progress Report (linked). PARCC will release these snapshots of the consortium's progress (and immediate next steps) every three months.

The archive for the progress reports and PARCC Place Newsletters.

PARCC wants to make sure that educators have ongoing opportunities to give feedback on and understand the Common Core and PARCC assessments so that they can be active participants in their implementation.  PARCC will continue to update this survey over time to take into account new opportunities for involvement.

PARCC was awarded a four-year supplemental grant of $15.8 million to help member states make a successful transition to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards(CCSS) and the aligned PARCC assessments.  This PDF provides an overview of the award allocation and the supports that will be developed.

Three page overview of the PARCC Consortium: what states and organizations are involved, what are the key features of PARCC, and what are the benefits of the PARCC assessment system.

Looking for some basic information on PARCC? This double-sided handout summarizes general information about PARCC, its benefits to educators, information about its design, and the role of K-12 educators in PARCC.

PARCC has recently released an overview of the resources and tools the consortium will be creating over the next four years, including a proposed timeline.  Such resources and tools include the model content frameworks, model instructional units, item and task prototypes, and professional development modules, among others.

PARCC has released Model Content Frameworks that will be used to inform the development of item specifications and blueprints for K-12 assessments in English and math. The frameworks also provide support and guidance for implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Click this link for more information or to view the frameworks.

The Recorded Webinar walks the participant through the Model Content Frameworks for ELA/Literacy, addresses frequently asked questions, and highlights key points for teachers and administrators.  The webinar lasts approximately 90 minutes. 

The Recorded Webinar walks the participant through the Model Content Frameworks for Mathematics, addresses frequently asked questions, and highlights key points for teachers and administrators.  The webinar lasts approximately 90 minutes. 

This press release announces new guidance designed to inform schools and districts as they make annual instructional technology purchases.  The guidelines include hardware and operating system specifications covering the vast majority of commercially available computers and tablets.

All technology updates and supporting information will be posted here.

This document communicate minimum hardware guidelines for new computer purchases.  These specifications were developed collaboratively with SBAC and with the Technology Working Groups of both consortia.  The primary intent of this document is to respond to the rapidly growing volume of questions about new purchases (i.e., What can we buy now for instruction that we know will also work with the 2014-2015 assessments?).  However, it is important to note that this document does not yet serve as the final technology requirements for the assessment

Supporting document to the v1.0 of the PARCC Technology Guidelines

This spreadsheet shows the progress of each LEA in doing an inventory by school of possible devices to be used for PARCC assessments.

This is a form that each LEA technology director must complete as part of the PARCC technology readiness assessment. The form is due to Michael.Ferry@ride.ri.gov by March 16, 2012.