Based on feedback from teachers and school leaders, the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced revisions to the administration of the PARCC assessments for the 2015-2016 school year. Teachers and leaders shared concerns that the PARCC assessments, took too much instructional time, created major scheduling dilemmas, and exhausted students. One DC high school math teacher estimated that his students took 7 hours of PARCC tests in March and additional testing in May before final exams. To address the concerns, the PARCC Governing Board voted unanimously to:

• Reduce testing time for students by approximately 90 minutes.

• Consolidate the two testing windows in math and English Language Arts into one.

• Reduce the number of test units by two or three.

OSSE and the PARCC Consortium are collaborating to finalize the District’s 2016 testing window.