HR0572 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0572 LRB099 12692 MST 36451 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The Illinois State Board of Education first required the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment to be administered to Illinois students as the official State assessment during the 2014-2015 school year; and

WHEREAS, Other assessments are routinely administered in districts and in individual schools and classrooms; and

WHEREAS, Responsible assessments allow us to determine year-over-year and intra-year growth of all students, and important tranches such as low-income students, students of color, special needs students, and English learners; and

WHEREAS, In many districts the combined in-district and State testing burden has led to a detrimental loss of instructional time for our students and teachers; and

WHEREAS, We should seek to reduce the number of summative tests annually in order to facilitate instructional time and maximize the effectiveness or assessments administered; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we urge the Illinois State Board of Education, together with partners in education, the General Assembly, and other experts from relevant fields, to study the efficacy of capping the combined state and indistrict summative test burden for all Illinois school districts at a reasonable number of hours per year and make a report to the Illinois General Assembly by January 15, 2016 as to the potential advantages and challenges presented by adopting such a cap in Illinois; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the Illinois State Board of Education to focus on a statewide assessment system that rewards classroom curriculum that is college and career ready, and provides feedback to teachers in a manner that can be used expeditiously for strengthening individual student instruction.