“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
– John Wooden

In response to parent questions about PARCC testing I shared the following video message today:

Last week I sent the community an email (excerpt below) in an effort to outline the District philosophy about assessment; that letter generated some questions and dialogue which in turn led to the video message shared above:

Dear Parents, Staff and Community Members,

In March, as required by law, District 109 will administer the new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College & Careers (PARCC) assessments to all students in grades 3-8. The assessments have two parts: Performance-Based Assessments (PBAs) given in March and End-of-Year (EOY) assessments administered in April/May. Students will take the PBAs between Monday, March 9 and Tuesday, March 24. Each building has established their testing schedule and building principals will communicate those schedules with families.

The state-mandated PARCC assessments test students’ knowledge and skills in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. PARCC replaces the annual Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT). Below is a chart of the tests and length of time allotted for each assessment. With the exception of make-up tests, students will be scheduled to take only one test per day.

You may have seen stories in the news lately about assessments and accountability for public schools. As PARCC is a new test for all of us, we all have many questions about the test and this first administration although our District “field tested” PARCC last year. You can read this Q&A and this fact sheet about the PARCC test from the Illinois State Board of Education website, and this parent page from PARCC. We also have developed a Q&A that answers questions more specific to our District.

District 109 believes the best preparation for our students is the high quality teaching and learning our teachers deliver every day by implementing our critical thinking and problem solving curricula. In order to set our students up for success, we will be preparing them in how to navigate the features of the assessment so they can use all the tools made available to them, freeing them up cognitively. Our focus always remains on learning and any practice will be minimal. Our requests of parents are few:

Encourage an early bedtime and proper breakfast (as we expect for every other day)
Watch for information from your building principal for details about what students should bring to school during the week of testing.

With so much public discourse about PARCC, many parents throughout the state have expressed concern about “overtesting.” I want to take this opportunity to share our overall philosophy of assessment – beyond PARCC – and explain how we use results in every classroom, with every student, to plan, inform, and enhance or adjust instruction.

Teaching and learning is diagnostic in nature. Our business is in the science of learning and child development, therefore, assessments play a pivotal role in quantifying and qualifying the learning process. We need to measure student learning to ensure that our children are learning. The results of assessments allow us to make decisions about curriculum and programs for students and professional development for teachers. Teachers and administrators regularly meet to review the data and look for trends in students, classrooms, buildings and District-wide. Testing allows us to ensure that we are meeting our goal to provide a guaranteed and viable curriculum for every child.

One of the key assessment tools we use is the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP test. I focus on this assessment because it has proven to be very valuable to District 109 educators in differentiating instruction and adjusting our teaching methods to meet student learning needs. This is a non-subjective nationally-normed assessment that measures student growth/learning in math and reading, and is aligned to the Common Core State Standards.

More than five million students across the country take MAP tests. In District 109, we administer this test to all students K-8 three times per year. We use the results to target instruction for each individual student. Teachers and students utilize MAP results immediately after the test allowing them to set learning goals and see what they need to adjust in instruction for every student, whether it means providing enrichment or clarification, or reteaching content.

The District’s MAP reports for our District from last year and this year show an impressive number of students meeting growth projections this year compared to last year. We’re excited that, in another year of collecting MAP data, we’ll be able to show cohort data (year-over-year data for the same group of students). Each child’s MAP data report is shared with parents. We encourage parents to speak with their child’s teacher(s), assistant or associate principal, principal, school psychologist, or other educational professionals with whom their child works with questions about any assessment results. In plain English all of our reforms and transforms are working! Students are learning and teachers are teaching each and every day in each and every classroom!

The MAP test is one of the tools we use to guide our instruction. You can view this list of all the assessments we administer, and why we do so. I can say with confidence that we carefully review and use the data from every assessment on this list to meet the academic needs of students (though we’ll know more after March – and after three administrations of the test – how valuable the PARCC data is for educators, students and parents).

Thank you for supporting our journey as we Engage, Inspire, and Empower each and every learner and member of our community.