RICAS
Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS)
Rhode Island transitioned to the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) during the 2017-2018 school year. The move to update assessments comes as Rhode Island drafted its State Plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the federal education law that replaced No Child Left Behind, and implements a comprehensive strategy for education as delineated in legislation passed in 2022.
For students in grades 3 through 8, the state will use the RICAS, a Rhode Island administration of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). It will be administered using the same online test platform as the PARCC. Some of the test questions on the RICAS were developed by PARCC, and remaining questions were developed by the state of Massachusetts. Utilizing the Massachusetts assessment will provide Rhode Island with transparent, easily transferable data for educators to better understand what is working and what needs improvement.
For more information, please visit RICAS at RIDE and/or the RICAS Resource Center.
Below you will find informational flyers about the test in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The RI Dept of Education's public data portal allows you to see how schools and districts fared on state assessments in the last few years.
You can't see individual student performance (that is private), but you can see how well schools and districts did, and the grade levels in those schools.
Make sure you select the assessment and district or school you want to see.