News from the Wildcat Lair
<p class="p1">In the past few years Illinois lawmakers have instituted a series of major changes to public schools intended to prepare students for 21st century thinking skills. </p><p class="p2">While our column’s recent articles have focused on the Common Core learning standards as an example of this change, Common Core is only part of a larger framework of educational reform in the state. In particular, Common Core is linked to reform with the state mandated assessments for students as well as the teacher evaluation system. </p><p class="p2">The new Illinois standardized assessment, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, PARCC, was created to align with the Common Core state standards. </p><p class="p2">This school year marks the first year PARCC, a computer-based assessment, will be mandated for students in grades 3 through 8 at an elementary level and students enrolled in an English III or Algebra II course at the high school level. </p><p class="p2">The assessment marks a significant change from the earlier state assessments in terms of what skills are assessed and how they are assessed. </p><p class="p2">PARCC is not necessarily designed to assess a student’s traditional content knowledge on subject areas, but rather skill levels of the Common Core standards. </p><p class="p2">For instance, in the Language Arts portion, students may be given a reading passage and then assessed on citing evidence and reasoning to support a claim given about the entire passage or a portion of the text. </p><p class="p2">The first administration of this test should set a benchmark as to where students are performing at the Common Core skills (fully implemented beginning with the 2013-2014 school year). </p><p class="p2">Some educators have raised concerns about assessing all students on a new set of skills that have only been implemented for less than two years at the time of the assessment and how the results will be perceived. </p><p class="p2">Students taking the PARCC have formerly been taught according to the Illinois Learning Standards, obviously the older students having the older curriculum taught the majority of their years spent in school. </p><p class="p2">In addition to a new type of student assessment, the performance evaluation system for teachers and principals is changing as well. </p><p class="p2">As stated on the Illinois State Board of Education, ISBE, website, in 2010, the same year that Common Core was approved by the Illinois legislature, a new teacher and principal assessment system was created by the Performance Evaluation Reform Act, PERA. For schools designated as lower performing, this change goes into effect in the 2015-2016 school year. </p><p class="p2">With PERA, teachers must show growth of student achievement as measured by the teacher’s curriculum aligned with the Common Core Standards. </p><p class="p2">The student growth component makes up a portion of the teacher’s evaluation, which is defined as “demonstrable change in a student’s or group of students’ knowledge or skills, as evidenced by gain and/or attainment on two or more assessments, between two or more points in time.” </p><p class="p2">Without getting into the specifics of the evaluation system, some of which are still being created, this marks a significant change from the system previously used which did not contain a student growth component. </p><p class="p2">Educational policies should reflect the values of a society and therefore change to meet the needs of an evolving society; of course different opinions are expressed on exactly what is necessary and the specifics of reform. </p><p class="p2">By nature, change brings out differences of opinion, and many in and out of the world of education have expressed opinions and theories on educational policy. As a starting point, one should at minimum be informed about changes occurring in our public schools.</p><p class="p2">For more information visit www.parcconline.org and http://www.isbe.net/pera/.</p><p class="p3"> </p>