One aspect of the No Child Left Behind law that doesn't get enough attention is that while it requires states to make progress toward student proficiency in reading and math, it leaves it up to the states themselves to define "proficiency" and to create the tests that determine what constitutes progress.
Carolyn Ellefson, a project manager at Riverside Publishing Company, which creates the test, said that preparation was not necessary, though her viewpoint will certainly not stop the practice.
"Even worse is the emphasis that is placed on the test that creates a culture of frenetic overachievement," he said.
City education officials and a spokesman for Harcourt Assessment, the company that created the test, rejected the allegations and said that the critics had misread the technical manual.
Both teams were required to create 45 kits for the testing that's set to commence early next year, evidence that they can be employed by non-medical professionals with no more training than what's available on their app walk-through.
In January of this year, Gallup, the Washington, D.C., polling and consulting company that created the test in 2001, released a book called Strengths Based Leadership that became an instant best-seller.
Others call it "Smarter Balanced," after the name of the group that created the test.
The PARCC consortium and its partners have worked hard to create a test that gives educational stakeholders the data on what students know so that we can improve our practice and help our students improve.
Since then, the university system has been working closely with officials of the College Board and ACT, a rival test, to create a test that would more closely reflect the state's high school curriculum.
Our great failing was in not creating the earlier tests that would have either exposed Arafat's inability to ultimately make peace or forced him to prepare his people for compromise".
