Dear Parents, Staff, Students, and Community Members,

The weather has certainly been challenging this winter, to say the least!  Please know that we appreciate your understanding and support as we've dealt with these historic weather conditions over the past couple of months. Thank you for your patience in these unusual circumstances.

As you are likely aware, District 90 intended to participate in field testing the  new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) assessment that is scheduled to replace the ISAT in 2015. The District's participation this year was voluntary, and offered us a means to become more familiar with the nature of the process. The field test would have involved only some of our students at each of the D90 schools. However, after extensive consideration, we have determined that participating in the PARCC field test at this time is not in the best instructional interest of our students.
 
Many factors went into the decision to forego participation in the field test. Among the considerations was that it would create a loss of instructional time for the selected students at a point when we are already addressing changes to instructional plans based on the four emergency closure days. Teachers and administrators also share a concern about the need to maintain balance in the number of student assessments administered, since our students are still required to participate in the ISAT this year. The loss of instructional time for the additional testing would also have an impact across affected grade levels that are working hard to collaborate toward the implementation of the Common Core standards. Finally, we confirmed that the District would not receive any student performance data from the administration of the field test.

While we will not be administering the test, our initial preparations to do so reaped a number of benefits. We learned that our technology capacity to administer this electronic assessment is quite robust. We also gained valuable insights about test administration, and the evolving and changing implementation guidelines. Fortunately, PARCC has started making sample assessment materials available online through its website. For staff members and parents who would like to review the nature of the assessment, these resources now provide helpful vehicles by which to do so.

If you have any questions about this decision or the PARCC test in general, please don't hesitate to contact me or Martha Ryan-Toye, Director of Student Services, at any time.   

Respectfully,