Common Core Assessment Length!
March 5, 2013
EdWeek has a great summary of the PARCC and Smarter Balance Common Core assessment times - Assessment Consortium Release Testing Time Estimates. Test will take up to 10 hours and schools will have a 20 day window to complete the tests. There will probably be some intense discussion but what we really need to remember is that if we have great common core teacher training AND we give students and opportunity to practice, students can be prepared and we can see much greater detail of student ability.
Catherine Gewertz summary provide below because it is the best I have seen - and remember, to get a really deep understanding of content mastery for students you have to go long. The performance-based assessment is given during the year.
Performance-Based Assessment:
ELA/Literacy: Three tasks, for which students will have to read one or more texts, answer several short comprehension and vocabulary questions, and write an essay based on evidence from what they just read. The three tasks will be a research simulation, a literary analysis, and a narrative task.
Math: At each grade level, there will be short and extended-response questions focused on conceptual knowledge and skills, as well as the math practices of reasoning and modeling.
End-of-Year Assessment:
ELA/Literacy: Students will read four to five texts, both literary and informational, and respond to short-answer comprehension and vocabulary questions for each.
Math: Will be comprised primarily of short-answer questions focused on conceptual knowledge, skills, and understandings.
Number of testing sessions: 9 total
ELA/Literacy: Three sessions for the performance-based component, two for the end-of-year.
Math: Two sessions for the performance-based component, two for the end-of-year.
Estimated time on task for students to complete both the performance-based and end-of-year components in math and ELA:
Grade 3: 8 hours
Grade 4-5: 9 hours, 20 minutes
Grades 6-8: 9 hours, 25 minutes
Grades 9-10: 9 hours, 45 minutes
Grades 11-12: 9 hours, 55 minutes
PARCC documents say that while these amounts of time are what is projected to be needed by the typical student, "all participating students will have a set amount of additional time" to take the tests. This will "provide them with ample time to demonstrate their knowledge" and "reduce the need to provide increased time as an accommodation." The documents sidestep the issue of exactly how much "additional time" will be given to students, under what conditions. But they say that students with disabilities and those learning English will be given even more time, if it's called for in their individualized education plans. The types of accommodations given to those student populations are under development; draft policies are slated to be released for public feedback next month.
Testing window:
For students: Five to nine days
For schools and districts: Up to 20 days for the performance-based component of the test, and up to 20 days for the end-of-year component. Schools may administer the tests in narrower windows of time if they have the capacity to do so.
PARCC notes that the information it released today could change, in the wake of research and field-testing, but that "major changes are not anticipated."