The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), along with its affiliate organizations the NFB of New Jersey and the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC), joined with the parents of a blind high school student in New Milford, New Jersey to file suit in federal court against the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), a nonprofit corporation that was established in 2013 currently made up of eighteen states, including New Jersey and the District of Columbia.
This consortium received a $186 million federal grant through the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top Assessment Program competition, with which it has promised to develop “next-generation” academic assessments for use in measuring the academic progress and achievement of K-12 students.
The suit has been filed because assessment tests created by PARCC, Inc. that were field tested at the student’s high school and other locations are not accessible to students who are blind. The field test assessments will not be offered in Braille, nor will they be available for use with text-to-speech screen reading technology that is commonly used by blind students. S.H. is a Braille reader. Another assessment consortium, known as Smarter Balanced Assessments Consortium, has announced that it will make its tests accessible in all phases of development, including field-testing. The suit alleges that the failure to make the assessments accessible during field-testing violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
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