Amendment #16 to H4000

Cost-Benefit Analysis for PARCC

Representatives Orrall of Lakeville, Jones of North Reading, Peterson of Grafton, Hill of Ipswich, Poirier of North Attleborough and deMacedo of Plymouth move to amend the bill by inserting at the end thereof the following new section:-

“SECTION XX. Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the commissioner of the department of elementary and secondary education, in collaboration with the secretary of administration and finance, shall analyze the commonwealth’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards, herein referred to as the standards, and the subsequent testing of the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), and report any preliminary findings to the house and senate committees on ways and means and the clerks of the house and senate no later than September 1, 2014 and submit a report with recommendations on or before June 30, 2015, on, included but not limited to, the following: (a) the informational technology upgrade costs required to give school districts the ability to use PARCC; (b) the cost of professional development for educators in the commonwealth to ensure teachers are trained to teach the standards; (c) the cost of new textbooks and instruction materials that must be purchased to comply with the new standards and PARCC; (d) the aggregate and per-student cost of administering the current tests for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System; (e) the aggregate and per-student cost of administering the currents tests for the PARCC; (f) the expected ongoing cost of supporting enhanced technology infrastructure required for online assessments; (g) the impact the online assessments will have on school districts that are not currently equipped to administer such assessments; (h) whether the increased costs of administering online assessments constitutes an unfunded mandate on school districts; and (i) a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the adoption and implementation of the standards and the corresponding online assessments.”.