Access for All: Exploring the PARCC Accessibility Features and Accommodations Manual

1. Access for All:Exploring the PARCC Accessibility Features and Accommodations Manual

2. The PARCC Assessment Review • Goal of Assessment – The PARCC assessments will enable teachers, schools, students and their parents to gain important insights into how well critical knowledge, skills and abilities essential for young people to thrive in college and careers are being mastered.

3. NJ TESTING Windows 2015 • Performance Based Assessment PBA* – summative • March 2 through March 27 • End Of Year EOY Assessment* – summative • April 27 through May 22 • 4 & 8 Science • HS Biology • Total Assessment Time PBA + EOY = ~ 9.5 hours

4. New Acronyms: General • PBA: performance-based assessment • EOY: end of year assessment • LAT: literary analysis task • RST: research simulation task • NT: narrative task • EBSR: evidence-based selected response • TECR: technology-enhanced constructed response • PCR: prose-constructed response

5. New Acronyms: A&A Manual • APIP: accessible portable item profile • PNP: personal needs profile The PARCC Assessment Delivery Platform will be compliant with the new Accessible Portable Item Profile (APIP) which will be able to read an individually-programmed student APIP Personal Needs Profile (PNP), and provide specified features to increase accessibility and accommodations to each student on the assessment, based on their PNP.

6. PARCC “Claims” – On Track for College and Career Readiness • ELA: Literacy, Comprehending Complex Texts, Writing effectively • Math: Solve grade-level/course level problems aligned to standards and math practice

7. Shared Concerns • Meet in Groups of 3-4 • Use the Note Catching form to answer the 3 questions • Rank these questions in order of importance to the group • Be prepared to share out the work of the group

8. Accommodation Language • Accommodations are adjustments to the testing situation, format, or administration. • Accommodations do not reduce learning expectations. • Accommodations are generally consistent with those already provide from classroom instruction and classroom instruction.

9. Accessibility in Your Classroom • All children have unique learning styles and needs • Technology offers new and exciting ways to increase accessibility for all students PARCC member states have all agreed to implement the principles, policies, and procedures set forth in the PARCC Accessibility Features and Accommodations Manual.

10. Universal Design • By applying principles of universal design, leveraging technology, embedding accessibility features, and allowing a broad range of accommodations, PARCC intends to provide opportunities for the widest possible number of students to demonstrate knowledge and skills while maintaining high expectations for all students to achieve the CCSS.

11. “Warning” pg.16 • The accommodations and conditions in this manual are provided to ensure a valid and reliable score on the PARCC assessments, not to provide an unfair advantage to those students who receive accommodations. Accommodations or other conditions provided outside these guidelines many change the construct of what is intended to be assessed and will call into question the reliability and validity of the score and may not report what a student knows and is able to do as measured on the assessment.

12. A New Vision for Accessibility • Applyprinciples of universal designfor accessible assessments during every stage of the development • Minimize/eliminatefeatures of the assessment that are irrelevant to what is being measured • Measurethe full range of complexity of the standards • Leveragetechnology for the accessible delivery ofassessment • Build accessibility throughout the test itself without sacrificing assessment validity • Usea combination of‘accessible’-authoring and accessible technologies from the inception of items and tasks • Engagestate and national experts

13. Accessibility & Accommodations • Accommodations and features used on the PARCC assessments are generally consistent with those use in daily instruction.

14. Process for Developing Accessible Assessments

15. Common Standards – Common Expectations – Common Access What’s New: • Common accommodations and participation policies for students with disabilities, English learners, and English learners with disabilities. • Technology • Accessibility features for all students • Increased involvement of all teachers in identifying tools What’s Similar: • Role of the IEP teams and English learner teams • Many accommodations currently used in states

16. PARCC Accessibility Features & Accommodations Manual

17. PARCC Comprehensive Accessibility Policies

18. Accessibility Features for All Students

19. Accessibility Features Identified in Advance

20. Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

21. Presentation Accommodations

22. Response Accommodations

23. Other Proposed Accommodations

24. Accommodations for English Learners

25. Accommodations for English Learners

26. Translation Policy • PARCC will develop translations of its mathematics assessments into Spanish and other languages as necessary, but use of the translated assessments will be a state decision. The additional costs associated with translating and administering assessments in languages other than English will be shared by the states that use them.

27. Partner Share – Plan of Action • Meet with same partners • Brainstorm actions that can be taken • Use the note catcher to plan at least one action • Prioritize actions as a group to report out

28. Contact Us • Questions about Accessibility: • Danielle Griswold, Program Associate – Policy, Research, and Design dgriswold@achieve.org • Tamara Reavis, Senior Advisor – Assessment Equity and Accessibility treavis@achieve.org • Bob Price: • price@nvnet.org • This power point and information related to this discussion can be found at nvcc.nvnet.org Go To Resources