Access for All:Exploring the PARCC Accessibility Features

and Accommodations Manual

• 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.

The PARCC Assessment Review

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• 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

NJ TESTING Windows 2015

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• 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

New Acronyms: General

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• APIP: accessible portable item profile• PNP: personal needs profile

New Acronyms: A&A Manual

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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.

• ELA: Literacy, Comprehending Complex Texts, Writing effectively

• Math: Solve grade-level/course level problems aligned to standards and 8 Mathematical Practices

PARCC “Claims” – On Track for College and Career Readiness

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• 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

Shared Concerns

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• 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.

Accommodation Language

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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.

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.

“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.

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A New Vision for Accessibility

• Apply principles of universal design for accessible assessments during every stage of the development

• Minimize/eliminate features of the assessment that are irrelevant to what is being measured

• Measure the full range of complexity of the standards• Leverage technology for the accessible delivery of assessment• Build accessibility throughout the test itself without sacrificing

assessment validity• Use a combination of ‘accessible’-authoring and accessible

technologies from the inception of items and tasks• Engage state and national experts

Accessibility & Accommodations

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

Process for Developing Accessible Assessments

Accessible Assessments

Accessibility Training

Assessment Tasks/Item

Development

Common Accommodations and Accessibility

Policies

Item Review

Manual Implementation

Guidance

Educator Engagement

Field Test Research Results

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

PARCC Accessibility Features & Accommodations Manual

http://nvcc.nvnet.org/Resources

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PARCC Comprehensive Accessibility Policies

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Features for All Students

Accessibility Features*

Identified in advance

Accommodations**

Accessibility Features for All Students

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Accessibility Features Identified in Advance

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

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Presentation Accommodations

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Response Accommodations

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Other Accommodations

Accommodations for English Learners

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Accommodations for English Learners

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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.

http://nvcc.nvnet.org/Resources

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Look for new resources from PARCC this fall at http://www.parcconline.org/

• 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

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Partner Share – Plan of Action

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:– Director of Curriculum and Instruction NVCC, NJ ELC Member– price@nvnet.org– This power point and information related to this discussion can be

found at nvcc.nvnet.org Go To Resources

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