PARCC Releases Final Accommodations Manual

Earlier this month, we reported on a draft of the accommodations manual for English language learners and students with disabilities being developed by Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), one of the two consortia developing Common Core assessments.

Lesli Maxwell at Education Week reports that the final version of the accommodations manual has just been released, and she also includes information about PARCC’s debate around testing supports for special populations in her coverage. (You can read an in-depth discussion of Common Core assessment of ELLs in Diane’s earlier post on the topic.)

Georgia Withdraws from PARCC

PARCC has also been in the news recently because the state of Georgia has decided to drop out of the consortium, joining a handful of other states who have left PARRC, including Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, and Alabama.

In two informative reports on this story, education reporters Catherine Gewertz of Education Week and Cory Turner of NPR offer some context for this decision, which includes factors such as technical capacity and the cost of the test, and they discuss what it might mean for long-term Common Core implementation.

Coming soon: Stay tuned for some brand new Common Core resources for ELLs from Colorín Colorado coming next week!