Race to the Top Assessment Program
On April 9, 2010, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the US Department of Education (USED) announced its intent to provide grant funding to consortia of States for grant categories under the Race to the Top Fund Assessment Program grants. According to the USED website, the Comprehensive Assessment System grants, "provide funding to consortia of States to develop assessments that are valid, support and inform instruction, provide accurate information about what students know and can do, and measure student achievement against standards designed to ensure that all students gain the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in college and the workplace. These assessments are intended to play a critical role in educational systems; provide administrators, educators, parents, and students with the data and information needed to continuously improve teaching and learning; and help meet the President's goal of restoring, by 2020, the nation's position as the world leader in college graduates."
The Comprehensive Assessment Systems grant will support the development of new assessment systems that measure student knowledge and skills against a common set of college- and career-ready standards in mathematics and English language arts in a way that covers the full range of those standards, elicits complex student demonstrations or applications of knowledge and skills as appropriate, and provides an accurate measure of student achievement across the full performance continuum and an accurate measure of student growth over a full academic year or course.
On the Sept. 2, 2010, two consortia of States were awarded grants to develop student assessment system aligned to a common core of academic standards. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia (SBAC) was awarded a four-year $176 million. The Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC or Partnership) was awarded $186 million Race to the Top assessment grants by the USED.
Colorado is a member of both winning consortia. In the spring of 2010, Commissioner Jones signed non-binding MOU's for both the Smarter Balanced consortium and the PARCC consortium. Please click here for the PARCC Memo and MOU and click here to view the Smarter Balanced consortium MOU. Smarter Balanced is a collection of 30 states that have been working collaboratively since December 2009 to develop a student assessment system aligned to a common core of academic content standards to apply for a Race-to-the-Top Assessment grant. The Partnership consortia includes 26 states that have joined together for the same purpose.
Smarter Balanced will focus on state-of-the-art adaptive online exams, using “open source” technology. The online system will provide accurate assessment information to teachers and others on the progress of all students, including those with disabilities, English language learners and low- and high-performing students. For more information, please visit http://www.k12.wa.us/smarter/.
The Parternship plans to create an assessment system and supporting tools that will help states dramatically increase the number of students who graduate high school ready for college and careers and provide students, parents, teachers and policymakers with the tools they need to help students - from grade three through high school - stay on track to graduate prepared. The Partnership will also develop formative tools for grades K-2. For more information, please visit: http://www.achieve.org/PARCC.
The grant stipulates that the assessment systems will need to be implemented in participating states during the 2014-2015 school year. Until this time, Colorado plans to continue to participate in both groups as the development of the new systems moves forward.
You can learn more at: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-assessment/index.html.
To learn more about the grant opportunity, please click here to read the US Department of Education's Executive Summary.