The PARCC consortium has chosen a new nonprofit to manage the business of maintaining and administering its test: New Meridian Corp., a brand-new organization led by people from various strands of the assessment world.
The announcement last month marks yet another stage of transition for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which has lost most of its original state members. PARCC leaders said the deal with New Meridian is an effort to reshape the organization to respond best to states’ needs.
Meanwhile, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—the other state group that won federal grants in 2010 to design new tests for the Common Core State Standards—announced that it has switched fiscal agents. After three years of working with the University of California, Los Angeles, Smarter Balanced will begin using UC-Santa Cruz’s Silicon Valley Extension in June to provide financial, administrative, and human-resource services.
