The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career exam will be replacing the Prairie State Achievement Examination, or PSAE, tests in Illinois public schools starting in the 2014-15 school year. The PARCC exam would be a series of standardized tests taken by freshmen through juniors to gauge student development in the two core curriculum areas: math and English language arts.
This year will be the last year anyone takes the PSAE test, only the juniors take the PSAE test. PSAE is made up if three different tests: the ACT, a reading and a math workkey test and a state developed science test. Those tests will be taken over a period of two days and will combine to create a cumulative PSAE score. That PSAE score is then use to determine if a student will receive PSAE scholarship recognition from Illinois, according to LHS Assistant Principal Ray Albin.
Although the PARCC test will be replacing the PSAE, it will not replace the ACT or SAT, as their purpose is for college entry. PARCC will measure yearly student development. As far as college goes, PARCC will aid students and colleges with course placement. The test scores will interpreted by colleges and used as aids for the course selection process. An enhanced course selection program will place students in classes that they should be taking.
Because PARCC and the state of Illinois are waiting to release more about the tests until the spring, many questions remain for schools and administrators. However, schools do know that they will be testing students biannually and that the testing periods will take about two weeks, according to Mr. Albin.
Few example questions have been released, but schools do know that the question format will be quite different than most standardized tests. The PARCC questions will ask students not only to find the answer, but it will also ask students for the process of getting the answer. If the student has the correct answer but the process is wrong, then the question is incorrect. Schools are also awaiting news about how the test will be given. The test could be the standard paper and pencil, or it could be a digital test. According to Mr. Albin, if the test is digital then students will most likely take PARCC using Google Chrome books.
The biggest remaining question is, when will PARCC be taken? It will be taken twice a year over a span of two weeks per testing period. The first test will be taken when courses are roughly 75 percent complete, or around March. The last test will be an end of year exam that tests student progression over the remainder of the school year.
Other states are currently under the process of changing their testing procedures as well. Illinois is one of 27 states that will be taking PARCC next year. The Smarter Balanced test will be used by most of the states that aren’t using PARCC.
“The closest state for us that is a Smarter Balanced state is Wisconsin,” said Mr. Albin. “ [It has a] similar type of test development [to PARCC]. A lot of digital testing. The biggest difference with Smarter Balance, that I’ve been told, is the testing gets progressively harder with every answer you get correct. Imagine you are testing online and the next question gets harder, and it gets harder, harder, harder, until you get something wrong. Then it goes back down to an easy question. Its called a progressive test.”
The future of standardized testing in Illinois will be released in the spring by PARCC. As of now, all that Illinois schools know is that their students will be taking the PARCC tests next year.
