More Than A Score’s coalition member Raise Your Hand has launched a campaign “Park the PARCC!” to get a one-year moratorium on administration of PARCC as state accountability testing for Illinois this spring.

At the October 2014 CPS Board meeting, CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the Board of Education affirmed that, because of their concerns about PARCC, they would be asking Illinois State Board of Education and the federal government to grant a one-year moratorium. CPS would prefer another year of pilot/field testing, administering PARCC to only 10% of students in the grades to be tested.

As the third largest district in the nation, this announcement made national news. (See press clips below.) Nationwide, the PARCC is a very vulnerable test; fewer than half the states originally belonging to the PARCC testing consortium will be giving the test to their elementary and high school students this spring.

Byrd-Bennett also revealed that she had already requested a waiver from ISBE and been turned down over the summer.

We think that just the public pressure from launching the Park the PARCC petition pushed Byrd-Bennett and the board to declare their opposition to the test publicly. Continued pressure on elected officials at all levels—local, state and federal—is needed to make the moratorium happen.

And remember, whether CPS plans to test 200,000 students or 20,000, we do not have to allow our children to be used as unpaid guinea pigs for Pearson on an unreliable, unvalidated standardized test. You can refuse the test on your child’s behalf! Contact us for more info on test refusal/opt out.