Page 3 - The Common Core State Standards & World Languages

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2011–12 school year, followed by seven states in
2012–13. Twenty states and the District of Columbia are
scheduled to begin their implementation in 2013–14,
with fifteen more joining in 2014–15 and two others to
follow in 2015–16. Wyoming has not made its timeline
clear (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2012).
Assessments will be fully implemented in the 2014–15
school year. (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium,
2012).
Although the decision to adopt the CCSS was made at
the state level, the federal government has supported
the initiative by giving those states that adopted the
Common Core an advantage in the Race to the Top
competition (Lewin, 2010) and by allocating $362
million to the Race to the Top Assessment Program,
which is charged with the development of new
assessment systems and other supports (Doorey, 2013).
The PARCC and the Smarter Ba lanced C onsortia
Assessments
The adoption of a common set of standards is not
a guarantee that all students will be college and
career ready. States need a variety of tools to support
implementation of the Standards, including training,
instructional materials and a variety of formative
and summative assessments. The U.S. Department of
Education authorized the Race to the Top Assessment
Program to fund several 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 theworkplace.” (U.S. Department
of Education, 2013a)
Two consortia, the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the
Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, were
awarded grants to develop a new generation of
assessments scheduled for implementation in the
2014–2015 school year. (Doorey, 2013). PARCC
is a consortium of twenty-two states plus the U.S.
Virgin Islands with the vision of creating a K–12
assessment system that: “builds a pathway to college
and career readiness for all students, creates high-
quality assessments that measure the full range of the
Common Core State Standards, supports educators
in the classroom, makes better use of technology in
assessments, and advances accountability at all levels.”
(Achieve, Inc., 2013) The PARCC assessment system is
composed of two required summative assessments, two
optional non-summative assessments, and a third non-
summative English language arts/literacy component
to assess speaking and listening skills. The PARCC
assessment system will be computer-based, including
“a mix of constructed response items, performance-
based tasks, and computer-enhanced, computer-
scored items.” The assessments will be scored through a
combination of automated and human scoring (Achieve,
Inc., 2013).
The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is
composed of twenty-four states “working to develop
next-generation assessments that accurately measure
student progress toward college- and career-readiness.”
(Smarter Balanced Consortium, 2012) Their assessment
system is comprised of “a summative assessment with
two parts: a computer adaptive test and performance
tasks that will be taken on a computer, but will not
be computer adaptive. In addition, there are optional
interim assessments that mirror the design of the
The adoption of a common set of standards
is not a guarantee that all students
will be college and career ready.