Every year at Ridge there seems to be a new testing model that everyone in the school has to adjust to. This year, it’s PARCC tests.
So what are these PARCC tests? PARCC is the state mandated test that stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which makes a cool acronym, but doesn’t really tell us what they test for.
Basically, the PARCC tests mathematics and reading skills, much like its predecessors, NJ ASK and HSPAs. According to the PARCC website, the tests will help determine if students are “on track for postsecondary success,” meaning it will evaluate students’ mastery of skills that are necessary for college.
At Ridge, the PARCC tests will shake up the routine students and teachers had fallen into with quarterlies. In order to create room in the calendar for the weeks of PARCC testing, quarterlies had to be set aside and a new system of finals given in certain classes, put into place.
The way PARCC will be taken is also completely different than previous exams. They will be taken on a computer, most likely a Chromebook, which students at Ridge aren’t used to using. Aly Bhatia, ’16, has experienced issues with this new method. She explains that “since everyone is taking the test at the same time, the connection gets slow and takes forever” and believes that because the test is on the computer “it will be much harder to do the work” for the math problems.
Speaking of math, the math portion of the PARCC tests that each student will take is dependent on the math level they are currently in at school, which differs from the previous standardized testing where everyone in the same grade took the same math assessment. This will hopefully benefit students, as the math assessment they will take will be closer to what they are currently learning in school.
Another different aspect of PARCC tests is its duration. Whereas HSPAs took up less than a week, the PARCC tests will take place from March 16th to 25th, and then again from April 21st to May 27th, for a total of 15 days of testing. The way these weeks will be structured will be similar to the HSPAs. During HSPAs, all the grades had a delayed opening, except for the juniors who came in to take the test. PARCC will work the same way, except now each grade will have to go through testing, and the week of delayed openings will become weeks to account for the addition of freshman and sophomores taking the test.
Delayed openings sound pretty good though, right? More sleep can’t possibly be a bad thing! But for all students taking AP classes, and the teachers of those classes, PARCC will severely disrupt instruction time.
Ms. Kupiec, the AP Spanish language teacher, explained that “March is the time where we do the most practice for the AP exam. I am nervous that the PARCC tests will give my students less time to prepare,” which could in turn negatively impact their scores.
Even the seniors who don’t have to take the test are affected by the PARCC tests. Katie Corrigan ’15, is worried that the PARCC tests “will eat up a ton of instruction time the two weeks right before the AP exam, which is valuable review time.”
The students that were hoping for “easy” testing like the HSPAs also may be sorely disappointed by the PARCC tests. Sanil Torani, ’19, who has taken the trial PARCC tests last year, described them as “much harder than the NJ ASK” and felt that the material in the tests was “unrelated to school” content.
Although the PARCC tests are meant to help assess the skills students need in college and in turn help improve those skills, it still has flaws that will disrupt Ridge students’ lives. We can only hope that these tests will be of use to students and teachers, and that the extra sleep delayed openings provide will benefit student’s mental capabilities.