The Ohio Department of Education has selected a new standardized test for next year to replace the exam known as Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). PARCC is the exam tied to the Common Core standards, and it was first put into use in Ohio during the 2014-2015 school year. Lawmakers included wording in the new state budget banning the assessment.
The headaches over PARCC started a few months ago. Parents were opting their students out of the exams saying the tests took too long and were too complicated. State lawmakers got into the fray and started pressuring the company that created PARCC to make changes. But, the fixes didn’t come fast enough, and now the exam is booted.
State Sen. Peggy Lehner is the chair of the Senate Education Committee, and says the new vendor is American Institutes for Research, or AIR.
“Hopefully the bugs in AIR have been worked out in Florida and Utah and Colorado, where they provided the tests this year. And we’ll only have some minimal angst over the implementation,” she said Wednesday morning.
And Lehner says the transition might be easier since AIR already provides social studies and science exams for some Ohio students.
"I'm hopeful that we can get a test in place and start communicating with our schools about schedules, timing of the sample tests... trying to familiarize the students and themselves with what the test looks like well before they actually have to start to take it," she said.
Lehner says her Senate Advisory Committee on Testing will help with the transition to the new exam.
