Advances in the PARCC ELA/Literacy Assessment

1. Advances in the PARCC ELA/Literacy Assessment

2. PARCC Membership

3. Common Core Assessment Timeline SY 2012-13 First year pilot/field testing and related research and data collection SY 2013-14 Second year pilot/field testing and related research and data collection SY 2014-15 Full administration of Common Core assessments Summer 2015 Set achievement levels, including college-ready performance levels SY 2010-11 Launch and design phase SY 2011-12 Development begins

4. College- and Career Ready Determination

5. Meaning of a College- and Career- Ready Determination • PARCC intends to make two College- and Career- Ready (CCR) Determinations • Students who earn a College- and Career-Ready Determination in ELA/literacy will have demonstrated the academic knowledge, skills and practices necessary to enter directly into and succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing courses in College English Composition, Literature, and technical courses requiring college-level reading and writing.

6. Benefit of Earning a College- and Career- Ready Determination • Students who earn a CCR Determination will be exempt from having to take and pass placement tests designed to determine whether they are academically prepared to enter directly into entry-level, credit-bearing courses in ELA/literacy, mathematics, and technical courses requiring college-level reading, writing, or mathematics skills . • The CCR Determination is notintended to inform admission decisions or exempt students from taking tests designed to place them into more advanced courses than entry-level.

7. Criteria for Earning a College- and Career- Ready Determination • CCR Determinations will be awarded to students who achieve Level 4* on the designated PARCC high school assessments in ELA/literacy and mathematics. • In order to achieve Level 4, students will need to demonstrate a strong command of the knowledge and skills embodied by the Common Core State Standards assessed on the designated PARCC high school assessments. • Options for determining the specific PARCC high school assessments that will be used to make CCR Determinations will be discussed at the December 2012 Governing Board meeting. *Results of PARCC assessments will be reported using five performance levels, Level 5 being the highest.

8. Standard-Setting/ Validation Studies The following statement will be used to inform standard-setting (determining cut scores for PARCC performance levels) and to conduct future studies to validate the efficacy of the CCR Determinations. • Students who earn a College- and Career-Ready Determination by performing at level 4 in ELA/literacy and enroll in College English Composition, Literature, and technical courses requiring college-level reading and writing have approximately a 0.75 probability of earning college credit by attaining at least a grade of C or its equivalent in those courses.

9. PARCC Performance Levels

10. Purposes of Performance Levels • To report the results of assessment(s) used to make College- and Career- Ready Determinations • To report the results of high school end-of-grade ELA/literacy assessments and end-of-course math assessments (grades 9 and 10) • To report the results of end-of-grade assessments for grades 3-8

11. Number of Levels • Five levels • No names for the levels have been proposed. Level 4is pitched to a level of rigor currently described by NAEP’s Proficient Level (solid command of the content). It is also the level for earning a CCR Determination.

12. General Definition of Each Level • Level 5: Distinguished command of the knowledge, skills, and practices embodied by the CCSS assessed at the grade level/ course. • Level 4: Strong command … • Level 3: Moderate command … • Level 2: Partial command … • Level 1: Minimal command …

13. General Content Claims • In ELA/literacy, general content claims at each level describe how well students are able to • Read and comprehend a range of sufficiently complex text independently • Write effectively when using and/or analyzing sources • Build and present knowledge through the integration, comparison, and synthesis of ideas • Use of context to determine the meaning of words and phrases

14. PLDs for Reporting Results of Assessments used to make College- and Career- Ready Determinations • Level 5 • Distinguished command of the knowledge and skills contained in the CCSS assessed • Academically well prepared to engage successfully in entry-level credit bearing courses in ….. • Exempt from having to take and pass placement tests designed to determine whether they are prepared for entry-level, credit bearing courses without need for remediation • Level 4 • Strong command … • Academically prepared … • Exempt … • Level 3 • Moderate command … • Will likely need academic support to engage successfully in entry-level, credit-bearing courses • Not exempt … • Level 2 • Partial command … • Will need academic support … • Not exempt … • Level 1 • Minimal command … • Will need extensive academic support … • Not exempt …

15. PLDs for Reporting Results of Grades 9 and 10 Assessments • Level 5 • Distinguished command… • Academically well prepared to engage successfully in further studies in the content area • On-track to become academically prepared to engage successfully in entry-level, credit bearing courses in … • Level 4 • Strong command … • Academically prepared … • On-track … • Level 3 • Moderate command … • Will likely need academic support to engage successfully in further studies … • Will likely need academic support to become prepared to engage successfully in entry-level …. • Level 2 • Partial command… • Will need academic support to engage successfully in further studies … • Will need academic support to become prepared to engage successfully in entry-level … • Level 1 • Minimal command … • Will need extensive academic support to engage successfully in further studies … • Will need extensive academic support to become prepared to engage successfully in entry-level …

16. PLDs for Reporting Results of End-of-Grade Assessments for Grades 3-8 • Level 5 • Distinguished command … • Academically well prepared to engage successfully in further studies in the content area • Level 4 • Strong command … • Academically prepared … • Level 3 • Moderate command • Will likely need academic support to engage successfully … • Level 2 • Partial command … • Will need academic support … • Level 1 • Minimal command • Will need extensive academic support

17. The PARCC Goals • Create high-quality assessments • Build a pathway to college and career readiness for all students • Support educators in the classroom • Develop 21st century, technology-based assessments • Advance accountability at all levels

18. Goal #1: Create High Quality Assessments • PARCC is developing an assessment system comprised of four components. Each component will be computer-delivered and will leverage technology to incorporate innovations. • Two summative assessment components designed to • Make “college- and career-readiness” and “on-track” determinations • Measure the full range of standards and full performance continuum • Provide data for accountability uses, including measures of growth • Two formative assessment components designed to • Generate timely information for informing instruction, interventions, and professional development during the school year • In ELA/literacy, a third formative component will assess students’ speaking and listening skills

19. Assessment Design 2 Optional Assessments/Flexible Administration • End-of-Year • Assessment • Innovative, computer-based items • Required • Mid-Year Assessment • Performance-based • Emphasis on hard-to-measure standards • Potentially summative • Performance-Based • Assessment (PBA) • Extended tasks • Applications of concepts and skills • Required • Diagnostic Assessment • Early indicator of student knowledge and skills to inform instruction, supports, and PD • Non-summative • Speaking And Listening Assessment • Locally scored • Non-summative

20. Goal #1: Create High Quality Assessments Required summative assessment components • Performance‐Based Assessment (PBA) – administered about the same time as current FCAT Writing, and comprised primarily of performance tasks. Results incorporated into summative score • End-of-Year Assessment (EOY) – administered about the same time as current EOCs, and comprised of innovative, machine-scorable items. Results combined with PBA results to yield a single summative score

21. Goal #1: Create High Quality Assessments • Required summative assessment components • Grades 3-11 in English, Language Arts, Literacy • Grades 3-8 in Mathematics • End-of-Course Mathematics tests in Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2; or Integrated Mathematics 1/2/3

22. Goal #1: Create High Quality Assessments • In 2014-2015, Common Core summative assessments will replace current FCAT 2.0 and End-of-Course tests currently being administered in Writing, Reading, and Mathematics • Current Florida assessments in non-Common Core content areas will remain in place: • FCAT 2.0 Science in Grades 5 and 8 • Florida’s Biology EOC assessment • Florida’s US History EOC assessment • Florida’s Civics EOC assessment • Retakes for Florida’s Grade 10 Reading and EOCs as required

23. Transition from FCAT to Common Core Assessments

24. Goal #1: Create High Quality Assessments • Required summative assessment components • States will have a choice of testing windows to accommodate district and school needs • Assessments will be given over the course of several days, with exact numbers and timing still to be determined • Results will be made available on a similar timeline as current EOCs and FCAT tests • Test Administration Guidance Document

25. PARCC Core Commitments, Key Shifts in the Standards, and the Corresponding Advances in PARCC

26. PARCC’s Fundamental Advance PARCC is designed to reward quality instruction aligned to the Standards, so the assessment is worthy of preparation rather than a distraction from good work.

27. PARCC’s Core Commitments to ELA/Literacy Assessment Quality • Texts Worth Reading: The assessments will use authentic texts worthy of study instead of artificially produced or commissioned passages.  • Questions Worth Answering: Sequences of questions that draw students into deeper encounters with texts will be the norm (as in an excellent classroom), rather than sets of random questions of varying quality. • Better Standards Demand Better Questions: Instead of reusing existing items, PARCC will develop custom items to the Standards. • Fidelity to the Standards (now in Teachers’ hands): PARCC evidences are rooted in the language of the Standards so that expectations remain the same in both instructional and assessment settings.

28. What is Different About PARCC’s Development Process? • PARCC states first developed the Model Content Frameworks to provide guidance on key elements of excellent instruction aligned with the Standards. • Then, those Frameworks informed the assessment blueprint design. So, for the first time. . . • PARCC is communicating in the same voice to teachers as it is to assessment developers!  • PARCC is designing the assessments around exactly the same critical content the standards expect of teachers and students.

29. What Are the Shifts at the Heart of PARCC Design (and the Standards)? • Complexity: Regular practice with complex text and its academic language. • Evidence: Reading and writing grounded in evidencefrom text, literary and informational. • Knowledge: Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction.

30. The CCSS Shifts Build Toward College and Career Readiness for All Students

31. Nine Specific Advances in the PARCC ELA/Literacy Assessment Demanded by the Three Core Shifts. . .

32. Shift 1: Regular practice with complex text and its academic language • PARCC builds a staircase of text complexity to ensure students are on track each year for college and career reading. • PARCC rewards careful, close reading rather than racing through passages. • PARCC systematically focuses on the words that matter most—not obscure vocabulary, but the academic language that pervades complex texts.

33. Shift 2: Reading and writing grounded in evidencefrom text, literary and informational • PARCC focuses on students rigorously citing evidence from texts throughout the assessment (including selected-response items). • PARCC includes questions with more than one right answer to allow students to generate a range of rich insights that are substantiated by evidence from text(s). • PARCC requires writing to sources rather than writing to de-contextualized expository prompts. • PARCC also includes rigorous expectations for narrative writing, including accuracy and precision in writing in later grades.

34. Shift 3: Building knowledge through content rich nonfiction • PARCC assesses not just ELA but a full range of reading and writing across the disciplines of science and social studies. • PARCC simulates research on the assessment, including the comparison and synthesis of ideas across a range of informational sources.

35. Sample Items Illustrating Some of the Advances

36. Students’ Command of Evidence with Complex Texts is at the Core of Every Part of the Assessment! SO. . . Two standards are always in play—whether they be reading or writing items, selected-response or constructed-response items on any one of the four components of PARCC. They are: • Reading Standard One (Use of Evidence) • Reading Standard Ten (Complex Texts)

37. Three Innovative Item Types That Showcase Students’ Command of Evidence with Complex Texts • Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR)—Combines a traditional selected-response question with a second selected-response question that asks students to show evidence from the text that supports the answer they provided to the first question. Underscores the importance of Reading Anchor Standard 1 for implementation of the CCSS. • Technology-Enhanced Constructed Response (TECR)—Uses technology to capture student comprehension of texts in authentic ways that have been difficult to score by machine for large scale assessments (e.g., drag and drop, cut and paste, shade text, move items to show relationships). • Range of Prose Constructed Responses (PCR)—Elicits evidence that students have understood a text or texts they have read and can communicate that understanding well both in terms of written expression and knowledge of language and conventions. There are four of these items of varying types on each annual performance-based assessment.

38. PARCC Summative Assessment with EBSR, TECR, and PCR Items

39. Sample Items Sample Items Illustrating Some of the Advances • Literary Analysis Task Sample Items (Grade 10 ) • Research Simulation Task Sample Items (Grade 7) • Narrative Writing Task Sample Items (Grade 6) • End of Year Assessment Sample Items(Grade 3)

40. Literary Analysis Task (Grade 10):Ovid’s “Daedalus and Icarus” andSexton’s “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph”

41. Understanding the Literary Analysis Task • Students carefully consider two literary texts worthy of close study. • They are asked to answer a few EBSR and TECR questions about each text to demonstrate their ability to do close analytic reading and to compare and synthesize ideas. • Students write a literary analysis about the two texts.

42. Texts Worth Reading? • Range: Example of assessing literature and helping to satisfy the 70%-30% split of informational text to literature at the high school grade band. • Quality: The story of Daedalus and Icarus from Ovid's Metamorphoses is a classic of the genre and has proven to be inspirational to painters and poets alike, and no poet’s version is more striking than that of Anne Sexton.  Her “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph” refashions the themes of the myth in dramatic fashion, providing a powerful counterpoint for students to explore.  • Complexity: Quantitatively and qualitatively, the passages have been validated and deemed suitable for use at grade 10.

43. Questions Worth Answering? On the following pages, there are two Evidence-Based Selected-Response Items and one Prose Constructed Response Item that challenge students’ command of evidence with complex texts.

44. Grade 10 Prose Constructed-Response Item Use what you have learned from reading “Daedalus and Icarus” by Ovid and “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph” by Anne Sexton to write an essay that provides an analysis of how Sexton transforms Daedalus and Icarus. As a starting point, you may want to consider what is emphasized, absent, or different in the two texts, but feel free to develop your own focus for analysis. Develop your essay by providing textual evidence from both texts. Be sure to follow the conventions of standard English.

45. Aligns to the Standards and Reflects Good Practice • Specific CCSS alignment to: • RL.10.1 (use of evidence); RI.10.9 (comparison of authors’ presentation); RL.10.10 (complex texts). • W.10.2 (writing to inform and explain); W.10.4 (writing coherently); W.10.9 (drawing evidence from texts). • L10.1-3 (grammar and conventions). • Measures the ability to explain how one text transforms ideas from another text by focusing on a specific concept presented in the texts (the transformation of ideas with regard to the experience of flying). • Asks students to write to sources rather than write to a de-contextualized prompt. • Focuses on students’ rigorously citing evidence for their answer. • Requires students to demonstrate they can apply the knowledge of language and conventions when writing.

46. Grade 10 Evidence-Based Selected-Response Item Part A Which of the following sentences best states an important theme about human behavior as described in Ovid’s “Daedalus and Icarus”? • Striving to achieve one’s dreams is a worthwhile endeavor. • The thoughtlessness of youth can have tragic results.* • Imagination and creativity bring their own rewards. • Everyone should learn from his or her mistakes. Part B Select three pieces of evidence from Ovid’s “Daedalus and Icarus” that support the answer to Part A. • “and by his playfulness retard the work/his anxious father planned” (lines 310-311)* • “But when at last/the father finished it, he poised himself” (lines 312-313) • “he fitted on his son the plumed wings/ with trembling hands, while down his withered cheeks/the tears were falling” (lines 327-329) • “Proud of his success/the foolish Icarus forsook his guide” (lines 348-349)* • “and, bold in vanity, began to soar/rising above his wings to touch the skies” (lines 350-351)* • “and as the years went by the gifted youth/began to rival his instructor’s art” (lines 376-377) • “Wherefore Daedalus/enraged and envious, sought to slay the youth” (lines 384-385) • “The Partridge hides/in shaded places by the leafy trees…for it is mindful of its former fall” (lines 395-396, 399)

47. Aligns to the Standards and Reflects Good Practice • Specific CCSS alignment to: • RL.10.1 (evidence). • RL.10.2 (theme). • RL.10.10 (complex text). • This item helps students gather information and details for use on the Prose Constructed Response; it requires close analytical reading to answer both parts correctly (e.g., Part A of this item is challenging because it requires synthesis of several parts of the myth to determine the answer). • Requires students in Part B to provide evidence for the accuracy of their answer in Part A. • PARCC assessment gives students the opportunity to gain partial credit if their answers reflect genuine comprehension on their part (e.g., they identify the theme correctly and are able to identify at least 2 details).

48. Grade 10 Evidence-Based Selected-Response Item Part A What does the word vanity mean in these lines from the text “Daedalus and Icarus”? “Proud of his success, the foolish Icarus forsook his guide, and, bold in vanity, began to soar” (lines 345-349) • arrogance* • fear • heroism • enthusiasm Part B Which word from the lines from the text in Part A best helps the reader understand the meaning of vanity? • proud* • success • foolish • soar

49. Aligns to the Standards and Reflects Good Practice • Specific CCSS alignment to: • RL.10.1 (use of evidence). • RL.10.4 (meaning of words and phrases). • RL.10.10 (complex texts). • Reflects a key advance, namely focusing on the words that matter most, not obscure vocabulary, but the academic language that pervades complex texts. • Rewards careful, close reading rather than requiring students to race through the passage to determine the meaning (by using the context of the text) of an academic word that is important to one of the main characters and to the central themes. Again, this item helps students gather details for use on the Prose Constructed Response. • Credit for Part B (evidence) is given only if Part A is correct, signaling the importance of the connection between the claim and the evidence.

50. Research Simulation Task (Grade 7): Amelia Earhart’s Disappearance