Online readiness tests start off well
Arkansas Department of Education leaders were happy with the first week of the brand-new, online Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, exams in math and literacy.
“We have had some real success stories and positive feedback from superintendents,” Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood said Friday.
“There’s been so much apprehension about this [online] format … but it is the world in which we live today, and it is how kids will do their work in the workplace,” Wood said. “I think it is really important that the testing be successful, and I’ve just been really pleased with the week we have had.”
Debbie Jones, the Arkansas Education Department’s assistant commissioner for learning services, told state Board of Education members Friday that teachers were “scared to death and so stressed before testing, but once they had a day under their belts they started to say, ‘This is really good,’ and, ‘Students are enjoying the tests, particularly the multiple choice parts over the essays.’ We have had no major breakdowns.”
Jones said most of the testing is being done on desktop and laptop computers.
Both Jones and Wood said there have been a “few hiccups,” such as a shortage of test booklets for one grade at a school, some computer service provider issues for a charter school and some coding issues that resulted in students taking more parts of the test at one sitting than was originally planned.
The PARCC exams — divided into the performance-based assessments being given this month and end-of-year assessments that will start April 27 — have an uncertain future in Arkansas. The state House of Representatives has approved House Bill 1241 to bar the use of the tests after this year. The bill is now pending in the Senate Education Committee.
The PARCC exams — for about 200,000 Arkansas students in grades three through 10 and in algebra I and geometry — were developed by a coalition of states based on a common set of math and literacy standards adopted by nearly all 50 states in 2010. In Arkansas, the new tests replace the old Benchmark and End-of-Course exams. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 requires the statewide testing of students.