Education Week - March 26, 2014 - 17

and the rest will take the test only
in one content area. "It's also a way
for adults in the [school] building to
think about what they need to do to
optimize the experience for next year."
Some districts are doing more
comprehensive field-testing than
their states. The suburban system in
Burlington, Mass., 15 miles west of
Boston, chose to give the PARCC field
test to every student in grades 3-11 in
both subjects. Eric Conti, the superintendent
of the 3,600-student district,
said he thinks it's good for adults and
students to experience something "as
close to the real thing" as possible.
A federal waiver allows Massachusetts
students participating in the
PARCC field test to skip the state's regular
testing under the Massachusetts
Comprehensive Assessment System,
although 10th graders still must take
the MCAS to graduate.
Burlington was originally chosen by
PARCC to do only the paper-and-pencil
version of the field test, and only in
some classrooms, in grades 3, 4, 8 and
10, Mr. Conti said. But he wanted to
put his district's technological readiness
to the test-it has a computer for
every student-so he appealed to the
state for permission to use the computer-based
version with all children
in tested grades, he said.
The district has made a deliberate
research subject of itself, not only
with PARCC, but with the Cambridge,
Mass.-based Rennie Center for Education
Research and Policy. Working
with the state teachers' union, the
superintendents' association, and
the state education department, the
Rennie Center will examine what
happens in different field-testing scenarios
in Burlington and in Revere, a
small urban district near Boston.
Burlington, for instance, will
"livestream" the field test, so any loss
of its network connections will interrupt
the exam availability, Mr. Conti
said. Revere, on the other hand, will
"cache" the field test, downloading it
and pumping it out locally. Burlington
is trying the field test on varying devices,
including iPads, Chromebooks,
Mac desktops, and PCs, in a bid to see
what works well and what doesn't.
"It makes no sense to show off
technologically," Mr. Conti said.
"We could probably test all our kids
in three days. Our network could
handle it. Instead, it will be a threeweek
disruption.
"But the point is to see what hap-
pens," he said. "As a superintendent,
I plan 18 months in advance. When
we do it live a year from now, it will
impact my budget if we have to make
changes. I'd rather know that sooner
than later."
Balancing Opposition, Potential
The Nashville, Tenn., school system
illustrates both the promise and the
risks districts face when taking part
in what the consortium test designers
call "testing the test." About 10 percent
of the district's 83,000 students
will take the PARCC field test, either in
math or in English/language arts.
Jessie Register, the district's director
of schools, said he thinks the experience
will "take away the fear of
the unknown" for teachers, students,
and parents. It also complements the
district's work to invest heavily in
technological infrastructure and in
training teachers to use technology to
differentiate instruction, he said.
Since Nashville's schools enroll onethird
of Tennessee's English-language
learners, Mr. Register considers his
district's participation pivotal to ensuring
the PARCC test works well for
such students.
Even as the Nashville schools inform
a potentially better test, the district
is treading on bumpy turf. Without
a federal waiver for Tennessee,
Nashville students will take both the
PARCC field tests and the state's regular
exams. And that likely will draw
some criticism, Mr. Register said.
"We're getting some pushback now
about too much assessment," he said.
"We have to communicate very effectively
with our parents and with our
teachers to make sure this doesn't become
a negative."
Looking for Weak Spots
More than a few worries are shad-
owing the landscape as field-testing
gets underway. Technological capacity
is high on the list.
"We have 60 computers in one
computer lab in our school. Our tech
people are worried about our servers,"
said Kristin Winder, a 6th grade
teacher in Great Falls, Mont.
One district experienced such
problems in the run-up to the PARCC
field tests that it decided against participating.
District sources said their
faith was undermined by last-minute
changes in test dates, student files
uploaded but then lost, and other logistical
and communications slip-ups.
"We simply couldn't allow our sys-
tem's first experience with PARCC to
be a negative one," a district official
said in a confidential email obtained
by Education Week. "We believe it
would have undermined our work
and our staff."
The complexity of mounting field
tests on such a large scale is daunting.
PARCC's field-test-administration
manual weighs in at 180 pages. The
readiness exercise has spawned
countless memos and staff meetings
across states and districts as systems
gear up for the field test. Educators
have spent time trying practice tests
with students, and administrators
overseeing the coming exams have
experimented with "training tests."
"You can imagine the planning it
takes to put something like this in
place," Ms. Sigman said of preparing
for the Smarter Balanced field tests.
Some see big benefits in all that
planning, as it provides a glimpse into
how the common core should inform
instruction and a preview of the forthcoming
tests. Others see those hours
as a tragic mischanneling of education
energy and resources.
"Schools are spending all this
money trying to get wired and ready
for PARCC and Smarter Balanced.
And who's getting that money? Corporations,"
said Peggy Robertson, an
Aurora, Colo., literacy coach who cofounded
United Opt Out National,
which seeks to eliminate high-stakes
standardized tests. "The less money
schools have, the more likely it is that
they'll fail. All of it is a setup for charter
schools and the privatization of
public education."
Teams from each consortium will
be watching many aspects of fieldtesting
closely to figure out what
works well and what doesn't.
Technology questions loom large:
How many children can a school test
at one time? If a teacher streams
video in her classroom while other
children take the test down the hall,
will it overload the system?
The teams are looking for many
other outcomes, too. What kinds of
answers does a given question elicit
from a range of students? Test designers
will have detailed studentlevel
information-pegged to unique
new identifiers to protect students'
identities-to enable them to see if
some questions stump particular
subgroups of students, such as those
in a given area of the country or those
from certain racial or socioeconomic
backgrounds. Do students who perform
well on most parts of the field
test consistently trip on some items?
Those kinds of observations will
lead to a weeding-out or revision of
questions, typically as many as 10
to 20 percent of the total, Ms. King of
Smarter Balanced said.
Other questions involve how to
scale and score the tests. PARCC officials,
for instance, will be considering
whether to treat the end-of-year
portion and the performance-task
portion as separate exams, with separate
scales and scores, or to combine
them into "one big test," Mr. Nellhaus
said. And if combined, should the two
pieces be weighted differently?
In the end, the two consortia are
keenly aware that they're asking a lot
of participating schools and districts:
major time investments and schedule
disruptions for what amounts to a research
project to refine the test. "This
is why we do this," Ms. King said. "To
see what works and what doesn't."
Even some of those most committed
to the project are feeling trepidation.
One district official who described
himself as "knee deep" in preparations
said he is bracing for blowback
from his staff and his parent community
if even moderate problems arise
with the test.
"I just hope it's worth it in the end,"
he said.
Assistant Editor Stephen Sawchuk
contributed to this article.
Coverage of "deeper learning" that will
prepare students with the skills and
knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly
changing world is supported in part
by a grant from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, at www.hewlett.
org. Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
Seventh grade students at Marshall Simonds
Middle School in Burlington, Mass., including
Sydney Matai, right, look at a practice PARCC test
earlier this month to give them some familiarity
with the format before field-testing was set to
begin this week.
TESTING THE TESTS
The two state consortia that are designing tests for
the Common Core State Standards begin field-testing
their assessments this month.
FIELD-TESTING WINDOWS
MARCH 24-APRIL 11
for performance-task
component; May 5-June 6
for end-of-year component
MARCH 25-JUNE 6
for all test items and
performance tasks
PROJECTED TESTING TIME FOR MOST STUDENTS
3 HOURS OR LESS (The
operational test, in 2015,
will be 8 TO 10 HOURS.)
3 TO 4½ HOURS (The
operational test, in 2015,
will be 7 TO 8½ hours.)
About 16,000
NUMBER OF SCHOOLS PARTICIPATING
About 21,000
NUMBER AND GRADE LEVEL
OF STUDENTS PARTICIPATING
1 MILLION, grades 3-11
(of 10 MILLION students
in tested grades in PARCC
field-testing states)
More than 3 MILLION,
grades 3-8 and 11 (of total
8.7 MILLION students in
tested grades in SBAC
field-testing states)
NUMBER OF MEMBER STATES
IN EACH CONSORTIUM PARTICIPATING
14 STATES and the District
of Columbia (Florida,
Indiana, and Pennsylvania
are not participating.)
22 STATES (Pennsylvania
is not participating.)
ONLINE VERSUS PAPER VERSIONS
About THREE-QUARTERS
of schools will use online
version; ONE-QUARTER
will use paper-and-pencil
version.
A SMALL STUDY SAMPLE
of schools in a few states
will use paper version;
THE REST will use the
online version.
SOURCES: The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College
and Careers; Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium
EDUCATION WEEK | March 26, 2014 | www.edweek.org | 17
SMARTER BALANCED
PARCC
Gretchen Ertl for Education Week
http://www.hewlett.org http://www.hewlett.org http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - March 26, 2014

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