Florida is backing out of its roll as a leader on a new standardized test—the PARCC assessment. PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. And the PARCC test is being developed to measure students’ achievement on the Common Core standards.
Florida has been responsible for the money involved in developing the PARCC test, but Governor Rick Scott wants out.The PARCC consortium is made up of 18 states and the District of Columbia. The states are working together to develop a new assessment test that would measure students’ achievement in the Common Core.
Florida has been one of those states. When Charlie Crist was governor, the PARCC group won a $186 million federal grant to support its work and Florida was put in charge of the money. But now, controversy is churning over the Common Core standards, and Governor Rick Scott has asked to sever those financial ties.
In a letter to the US Secretary of education and to Florida’s board of education, Scott said he would instead like to see a competitive bidding process to find a new standardized test, although he was explicit about not ruling out PARCC entirely.
“PARCC was one of those and still is on the table as one of those,” said Pam Stewart, Florida’s newly appointed Commissioner of Education. Stewart said in a press call that the change would not impact school grades or the plan to phase out the FCAT after this year. She said she’s confident that Florida will be able to pick an appropriate standardized test to replace the FCAT by next school year.
“I believe this is the right decision for Florida and Florida students, not to take a step back, not to remove our foot from the gas pedal", said Stewart.
A spokesperson for PARCC said that the financial responsibilities will likely be handed off to another state or an affiliated non-profit.