What Assessment Is Louisiana Taking? It’s Not PARCC

Mercedes Schneider wrote a good piece on Friday that points out that Louisiana State Superintendent of Education John White says Louisiana is taking the PARCC assessments, but there is no way the state could possibly be administer PARCC.

An excerpt:

It is clear that Pearson is responsible for the PARCC assessments.

It is also clear on this Pearson technology platform, PearsonAccess, which “serves as the entry point to all Pearson services used by school districts participating in the PARCC consortium,” that Louisiana is not listed among the states granted access to the Pearson-administrated PARCC assessments.

Here are Pearson’s advertised Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 testing schedules.

No Louisiana.

The states allowed to access Pearson’s PARCC platform are Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, and the territory, Washington, DC.

PARCC is down to ten states and DC for 2014-15. (Note: New York will be administering Pearson tests for five years beginning in 2011, not the Pearson PARCC tests.)

Louisiana is not an active PARCC state according to official PARCC contractor, Pearson.

So, if White is advancing the idea that “PARCC” tests administered in Louisiana are the same PARCC tests taken by “5 million students across the country,” he is lying.

In order for Louisiana to be among the official PARCC states in 2014-15, LDOE must have a PARCC contract with Pearson.

Louisiana has no PARCC contract with Pearson and never did.

Currently, White is hanging all of his Louisiana assessment hopes on two contracts that LDOE has had for years with Data Recognition Corp (DRC).

DRC is advertising its own CCSS-aligned test questions, but these are not the official PARCC assessments that now are the business of Pearson.

Be sure to read the whole piece.  Louisiana parents (and citizens in general) deserve the truth from the Louisiana Department of Education and they are currently not getting it.

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