A consortium of state education leaders have voted to make a big change to the standardized test known as the PARCC. The PARCC’s Governing Board, which includes state education commissioners and superintendents from around the country, has decided to scale back on testing to just one window late in the year. This year there were two testing periods, with the first in February.
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, said the two-window system did not leave a lot of time for actual instruction.
“And this will certainly give our teachers an opportunity to spend more time on instruction rather than for preparing for tests and using class time to actually taking tests,” Cropper said.
Cropper and a state advisory panel would like to see more changes, such as additional transparency with the testing questions and faster results.