A Walk In the PARCC

1. A Walk In the PARCC An ELA Focus On Next Generation Assessments and Model Frameworks Char Shryock - PARCC ELC Sept 13, 2012

2. 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 • Build an assessment that is sustainable and affordable

3. Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)

5. Non-Summative Optional Assessment Components Optional Assessments/Flexible Administration • Diagnostic Assessment designed to be an indicator of student knowledge and skills so that instruction, supports and professional development can be tailored to meet student needs • Mid-Year Assessment comprised of performance-based items and tasks, with an emphasis on hard-to-measure standards. After study, individual states may consider including as a summative component Mid-Year Assessment • Performance-based • Emphasis on hard to measure standards • Potentially summative Diagnostic Assessment • Early indicator of student knowledge and skills to inform instruction, supports, and PD

6. Summative Assessment Components • Performance-Based Assessment (PBA) administered as close to the end of the school year as possible. The ELA/literacy PBA will focus on writing effectively when analyzing text. The mathematics PBA will focus on applying skills, concepts, and understandings to solve multi-step problems requiring abstract reasoning, precision, perseverance, and strategic use of tools • End-of-Year Assessment (EOY) administered after approx. 90% of the school year. The ELA/literacy EOY will focus on reading comprehension. The math EOY will be comprised of innovative, machine-scorable items End-of-Year Assessment • Innovative, computer-based items Performance-Based Assessment (PBA) • Extended tasks • Applications of concepts and skills

7. Promoting Student Access • Contractors must adhere to the following principles: • Use Universal Design principles to create accessible assessments throughout every stage and component of the assessment • Minimize/eliminate features of the assessment that are irrelevant to what is being measured, so that all students can more accurately demonstrate their knowledge and skills • Measure the full range of complexity of the standards • Use technology to make all components of the assessment as accessible as possible

8. Use of Technology Technology-Enhanced Items Electronic Item Banking Allow students to demonstrate knowledge Allow students to run simulations, build models Student Access & Engagement Large item bank allows for larger testing windows. Tests can be used by multiple states Modifications can be built right into the assessment. Interactive items are engaging Immediate feedback on results

9. Goal #2: Build a Pathway to College and Career Readiness for All Students K-2 3-8 High School K-2 formative assessment being developed, aligned to the PARCC system Timely student achievement data showing students, parents and educators whether ALL students are on-track to college and career readiness College readiness score to identify who is ready for college-level coursework Targeted interventions & supports: • 12th-grade bridge courses • PD for educators SUCCESS IN FIRST-YEAR, CREDIT-BEARING, POSTSECONDARY COURSEWORK ONGOING STUDENT SUPPORTS/INTERVENTIONS

10. Goal #3: Instructional Supports and Tools Model Content Frameworks • Development of assessment blueprints; provide guidance to state, district- and school-level curriculum leaders in the development of aligned instructional materials • Released November 9, 2011; Re-Release late June; Final in AugustSupport implementation of the CCSS; support . www.parcconline.org/parcc-content-frameworks • Provide educators with examples of ways to implement the CCSS in schools; allow for the development and sharing of ideas for instructional implementation of the CCSS; encourage development of additional PARCC tools • Expected Spring 2013 Professional Learning Modules Model Instructional Units Model Instructional Units

11. Goal #3: Supports and Tools (continued) Professional Development Modules Item and Task Prototypes • Develop models of innovative, online-delivered items and rich performance tasks proposed for use in the PARCC assessments. • http://www.parcconline.org/samples/item-task-prototypes • Develop professional development modules focused on assessments to help teachers, school and district leaders, and testing coordinators understand the new assessment system and use of the data • Expected Fall 2013 Partnership Resource Center • One-stop shop for PARCC resources; provide an online warehouse for all PARCC tools and resources as well as other instructional material being developed by PARCC states and districts and national organizations • Expected Spring 2013

12. PARCC assessments will be purposefully designed to generate valid, reliable and timely data, including measures of growth,for various accountability uses including: School and district effectiveness Educator effectiveness Student placement into college-credit bearing courses Comparisons with other state and international benchmarks PARCC assessments will be designed for other accountability uses as states deem appropriate Goal #5: Advance Accountability at All Levels

13. What Else Do We Need to Know About PARCC? • Assessments are designed to reward quality instructional/curriculum alignment to the standards • PARCC assessments will have texts worth reading - authentic, interesting, engaging - not commissioned. • PARCC questions are worth answering - deep encounter with texts, series of questions that help students to build knowledge, questions that allow them to support their answers. • Better standards require custom item development...not just "picking things off the shelf" • PARCC EVIDENCES...rooted in language of the standards

14. PARCC Model Content Frameworks

15. Approach of the Model Content Frameworks for ELA/Literacy PARCC Model Content Frameworks provide one model for how to organize content and integrate the four strands of the CCSS Developed using a state led process with feedback from all stakeholders. They focus on framing the critical advances in the standards: • Reading complex texts • Teaching close reading strategies • Reading a range of texts—literature and informational • Writing effectively when using and/or analyzing sources • Conducting and reporting on research -and writing to inform • Speaking and listening • Using knowledge of language effectively when reading, writing, and speaking

16. Narrative Writing - New in 8/2012 Vers. In Writing to Texts, two distinct forms:

17. Model Content Framework Chart for Grade 3 - old vers.

18. Narrative Writing - Updated Framework

19. Key Elements of the Model Content Frameworks Note...the newest version of the Framework is interactive - and searchable.

20. Writing Standards Progression from Grade 8 to Grades 9–10 Writing Standards Progression from Grade 8 to Grades 9–10

21. PARCC Item Prototypes How to Use Prototypes • Starting points for discussions on how our thinking about assessment needs to shift. • Examples of what a technology enhanced questions might look like. • Models for studying the relationship between the CCSS, the "claims" and the actual assessment - use the .pdf for each question to see this info.

22. Claims Evidence Task Models Design begins with the inferences (claims) we want to make about students In order to support claims, we must gather evidence Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) for the PARCC Assessments Tasks are designed to elicit specific evidence from students in support of claims ECD is a deliberate and systematic approach to assessment development that will help to establish the validityof the assessments, increase the comparability of year-to year results, and increase efficiencies/reduce costs.

23. More About Universal Design Or Evidence Based Design • Language of Claim....evidence centered design in the classroom • What student products will allow teachers to say with assurance that the student has mastered the content standard...what do the products look like? • What are the classroom activities necessary to get to this assessment? • What evidence can we point to, highlight or underline in a student response that we will be looking for? • Have we designed tasks to elicit specific evidence from students to support our claims? • From all of this...begin to build task models that can be used to develop items...think of these like "patterns" that can be followed.

24. Understanding the Claims

25. Things to think about???? How do the claims help students be ready for college and career... • We don't usually do a formalized research project with power point...we do a lot of ongoing research in our daily lives. So, research needs to be embedded all the time. • Textbook anthologies with a lot of front loading don't encourage kids to pull out or draw their own ideas based on the text...but in the real world most of the reading is nonfiction. • Need to continue to work with including all types of writing into all content areas. • How do we define "independent" reading? What will be expected of students by college or career?

26. Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) for the PARCC Assessments ECD is a deliberate and systematic approach to assessment development that will help to establish the validityof the assessments, increase the comparability of year-to year results, and increase efficiencies/reduce costs.

27. ELA/Literacy Task Types Terminology ELA/Literacy Vocabulary • PBA: Prose Constructed Response (PCR) • EOY: Evidence-Based Selected Response (EBSR) • EOY: Technology Enhanced Constructed Response (TECR) Old Terminology and Test Item Components • Extended Response or Short Answer • Multiple Choice

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

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

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

33. 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.

34. 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 includes rigorous expectations for narrative writing, including accuracy and precision in writing in later grades.

35. 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.

36. 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. • 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 the exact same critical content the standards expect of teachers and students.

37. 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)

38. 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 on each annual performance-based assessment.

39. PARCC Summative Assessmentwith EBSR, TECR, and PCR Items - These are PERFORMANCE TASKS Literary Analysis Task: Students asked to read complex texts and compose an analytic essay Narrative Task: Students asked to write a story; detail a scientific process; write a historical account; or describe an account of events, scenes, or objects. Research Simulation Task: Students asked to analyze a topic presented through several texts, including an anchor text that introduces the topic. Students will answer series of questions and write two analytic essays.

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? • The grade 10 example provides 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

45. 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)

46. 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

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

48. Understanding the Research Simulation Task - Broken into 2 parts on same day Session 1: • Students begin by reading an anchor text that introduces the topic. EBSR and TECR items ask students to gather key details about the passage to support their understanding. • Then, they write a summary or short analysis of the piece. • Session 2: • Students read two additional sources (may include a multimedia text) and answer a few questions about each text to learn more about the topic so they are ready to write the final essay and to show their reading comprehension. • Finally, students mirror the research process by synthesizing their understandings into an analytic essay using textual evidence from several of the sources.

49. Texts Worth Reading? • Range: Example of assessing reading across the disciplines and helping to satisfy the 55%-45% split of informational text to literature at the 6-8 grade band. • Quality: The texts on Amelia Earhart represent content-rich nonfiction on a topic that is historically significant. • Complexity: Quantitatively and qualitatively, the passages have been validated and deemed suitable for use at grade 7.

50. Questions Worth Answering? • The grade 7 example provides two Prose Constructed Response Items and one Technology Enhanced Constructed-Response Item that challenge students’ command of evidence with complex texts.