Since there has been some changes with the membership of both PARCC and Smarter Balanced I thought it would be a good idea to bring you an updated list.
PARCC is in trouble. The big news this week is that Ohio Governor John Kasich signed the budget the Ohio Legislature sent him that prohibited PARCC. Maryland’s Governor (they are the current fiscal agent) Larry Hogan has doubts about the assessment and is looking for a way to ditch Common Core and PARCC.
Massachusetts is still in process of deciding between PARCC and MCAS so they could still end up leaving. Arkansas is out the door unless the state’s board of education decides to sue Governor Asa Hutchinson. Louisiana’s future with the assessment consortia is in doubt as well. It stayed in this school year when a state judge overruled Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s executive order. A review of Common Core and PARCC will be underway soon. Mississippi is pulling out of PARCC after this year as well.
So basically we have a consortia that once had 25 members is now down to 8 states plus DC with three of those states’ future being uncertain: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia.
Smarter Balanced is in better shape, but has lost a few members. They are slow at updating their map, but in reality they have 19 members. Six states have dropped Smarter Balanced. They are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, U.S. Virgin Islands, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Missouri and Maine just dropped out this year. Wisconsin is on the verge of defunding it. North Carolina as they continue their review process could be leaving as well. Two states, North Dakota and West Virginia, have lawsuits pending.
Just a note, I added Iowa back in because they are currently listed as an affiliate despite Iowa Governor Branstad’s executive order. Plus, the Iowa State Board of Education is in process of mandating the assessment without a vote of the legislature so unless that attempt is killed during the administrative rules process the state will have Smarter Balanced.
Utah left SBAC a couple years back but adopted AIR’s SAGE test. AIR is the official partner of SBAC so in reality Utah is still on SBAC. Florida has now decided to adopt AIR’s test and purchase questions from Utah. SAGE tests are pathetic. They should die along with these other federally funded consortia.
Good point. From a fiscal standpoint though they are not part of the consortium.
Now Ohio is adopting AIR. They might not be part of the federal consortium, but I wonder if AIR got money from SBAC to keep it going while states sign on and pay millions of dollars to them.
The problem is that PARCC and Smarter Balance can hide behind other organizations. Case in point: In TN we got rid of PARCC and hired Measurement Inc to create new assessments. MI contracts with AIR/Smarter Balance and AIR leases the CC aligned assessments they wrote for Utah for the state of TN for $2.34 million per year. So although it appears as if TN hired MI we end up having AIR/Smarter Balance writing our assessments. If you look at TNReady sample test questions and compare them to Utah SAGE they are the same. So beware of smoke and mirror organizations in which PARCC and SBAC will find shelter.
Karen, I get what you are saying. I’ve been asked to provide an updated list of who is in the consortia. This is it.