The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has, for the second time, released test items from its Common Core-aligned assessment on its website for public viewing.

The test questions and corresponding standards in totality "represent roughly one full test per grade level in each subject area," the PARCC said.

With the release of the test questions, the PARCC also offers educators resources that help them best understand the scoring of both math and English Language Arts/Literacy items.

By releasing these materials, the PARCC hopes that educators will be able to use them "as valuable instructional tools that will give teachers better insight into how students may demonstrate mastery of the standards and how they might be helped on their pathways to academic success—whether in earlier grades or, for older students, college and careers."

The item release is also in-line with the major restructuring PARCC announced it will be undertaking. Once partnered with 25 states, PARCC now only maintains partnership with six states and the District of Colombia, causing it to overhaul its model by offering states "a la carte access."

In other words, states will no longer have to exclusively partner with PARCC to access its assessment resources, but can now opt to develop an assessment using a hybrid of both PARCC and state items.

According to Education Week, the restructuring will afford states with a significant amount of flexibility for using PARCC content to develop assessments in the future.

"They can license all, some, or individual test items. They can each choose their own test-administration vendor, a role currently filled for all PARCC states by Pearson—or they can band together and use a common vendor to give the test. States can also opt for a smaller role, allowing them access only to some, but not all, test items," EdWeek said.

By releasing for public viewing item sets, answer keys, standards alignment, and sample student responses, the PARCC is intelligently providing individuals with a look at what it is has to offer, something that will be important as it transitions to its "a la carte" model.

What do YOU think? Can PARCC’s proposed restructuring help it remain relevant? Take our poll below.

Nicole Gorman, Senior Education World Contributor

12/28/2016