Assessment

PARCC Selects Open Source Platform for Non-Summative Assessments

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 04/13/15

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) has selected TAO, an open assessment platform from Open Assessment Technologies (OAT), to deliver non-summative Common Core assessments.

"Open source was a key requirement of the PARCC non-summative assessment tools delivery system because it allows us to more easily integrate the platform with other partners and opportunities in the future, as well as leverage the collective open source community contributions to the platform development," said Jeff Cuff, director of technology at Parcc Inc., the nonprofit organization that manages the assessment system on behalf of the PARCC states, in a prepared statement. "Even more importantly, it is a highly economical approach for the states participating in the consortium, providing significant savings for maintenance compared to other options."

Breakthrough Technologies, a company that has previously collaborated with OAT, will join the project, which is designed to provide the PARCC states "the essential infrastructure and tools for computer-based assessment delivery, providing all the critical components such as teacher portal, student registration, test delivery and scoring, results analysis and r eporting," according to a news release.

Upon completion, the system will be used to evaluate the English language arts, literacy and math progress of 5 million students in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

"We are pleased that the PARCC consortium selected TAO for the technical infrastructure necessary to deliver a secure, reliable, flexible and scalable computer-based assessment solution," said Marc Oswald, co-founder and CEO of Open Assessment Technologies, in a prepared statement. "Our Open Source solution gives education officials full control over their assessment assets, and the agility to respond to changing requirements at a fraction of today's cost."