PARCC field testing announced in Massachusetts

According to yesterday's Commissioner's Weekly Update, districts were contacted this week if they were selected to assist with field testing the new PARCC test this spring:

Today, ESE emailed superintendents and charter school leaders in districts where one or more of their schools were randomly selected to participate in this year's Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) field test in English language arts/literacy and mathematics in grades 3-11. Pearson, the field test contractor, will follow up with a second email to those school leaders by Sept. 4 to provide additional details about the test administration, including the names of individual schools selected to participate. Our expectation is that schools selected to participate in the field test will do so. In the event that some schools are excluded from the field test for extraordinary circumstances, Pearson will need to select additional replacement schools in September or October. Those replacements schools may come from either districts notified today or ones that are not yet in the sample.

PARCC's goal in selecting districts and schools to participate was to draw a representative sample. For Massachusetts, nearly two-thirds of schools statewide (about 1,250 out of more than 1,800 schools) were chosen for the field test. The advantage of this sample size is that more schools and students are able to experience this new testing program while we limit the number of classrooms within each school that will have to participate. If you have any questions about the field test, please contact ESE at parcc@doe.mass.edu.

I will save my commentary on this for now; I've asked if Worcester has been selected and haven't gotten a response back.
I will say that if this bothers you, get in touch with your School Committee NOW.