Beyond March madness: Fruitful practices to prepare for high-stakes ELA tests

Successful implementation of the Common Core State Standards (2010) will require an alignment between learning standards, effective instruction, and the new assessments designed by the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced (SB) consortia. Both the CCSS and the new generation of assessments call for students to comprehend and respond to complex texts using text evidence and high levels of thinking. Traditional test preparation that focused on isolated skills is not likely to be effective in preparing students for success on the PARCC or SB tests. Instead, fruitful practices are likely to be (a) teaching integrated content units, (b) teaching comprehension strategies, (c) providing opportunities for high levels of speaking, listening and thinking about texts, (d) using official writing rubrics, and (e) providing diagnostic interventions for at-risk readers.