Pearson Releases White Paper on Common Core Specs

Pearson on Wednesday released a white paper developed to help guide U.S. education leaders as they develop large-scale summative assessments based on the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The paper, “Considerations for Developing Test Specifications for Common Core Standards,” describes the relationships between the new curriculum standards, which are guidelines for instruction, and test specifications, which are guidelines for the development of sound and effective items and tests.
As the two state consortia that received U.S. Department of Education Race to the Top grants design comprehensive assessment systems that map to the CCSS begin their work, they will grapple with the issues that Pearson identifies and discusses in this paper. The paper includes an expert discussion of each issue and subsequent recommendations for addressing them. Issues discussed include:
*Common Core Standards
*Test Focus Relative to Curriculum Standards
*Roll-up/Reporting Categories
*Common Core Standards Alignment-Coding
*Content Validity
*Item Types
*Test Blueprints for Each Subject and Grade
*Psychometric Specifications
*Test Administration Modality
*Performance Scoring Models
*Accessibility Guidelines
*Item and Stimulus Review
You can download the entire white paper here.
Read Tom’s take here and why he thinks we the consortia should push online and on-demand assessment in support of competency-based education