Diagnostic Assessments

To help teachers assess the extent to which students are on track to mastering the CCSS at their grade levels, PARCC will develop diagnostic assessments in reading, writing and mathematics.

In ELA, one element of the reading diagnostic assessment is a text complexity tool, which will provide a diagnostic of a student’s ability to read texts independently in order to provide useful guidance to educators, parents, and students about appropriate texts for students when reading independently. More broadly, the assessments will be useful for the implementation of the ELA/Literacy CCSS, as they will help educators meet the demands of the ELA/Literacy standards to teach appropriately-complex texts by helping teachers understand what “appropriately complex” really means.

The diagnostic assessment in math will help educators understand the extent to which students have mastered the key ideas in mathematics ("highlighted domains") in order to pinpoint areas needing improvement or identify areas in which students are excelling. In addition, it will provide greater detail about students who are above and below grade level so teachers can individualize instruction.

It is anticipated that the diagnostic assessments will be available Fall 2014.