PUT IT IN PARCC: Let the games begin! This month, about 30,000 students in six states will sit through the first official administration of the Common Core assessment developed by PARCC (AKA the "Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers"), according to the Washington Post. A group of students in Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio and Rhode Island, all of whom are at schools on a "semester schedule," will take the test during the month of December, while upwards of 5 million students plan to take it later this spring. This announcement follows PARCC's recent release of a "Lessons Learned" report, which cited the assessment's points of strength and weakness, collected from PARCC's spring 2014 field tests.