WASHINGTON — “I don’t know.”
Clarksburg High School senior Angie Nseliema said that was her response to roughly half the questions on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers — or PARCC for short.
The tests have replaced the Maryland School Assessments in grades three through eight, and the High School Assessments in English and Algebra. The PARCC tests are said to be more rigorous than the MSAs and HSAs, which were thought to be too easy.
At first, Nseliema thought she was alone in her confusion, but soon she heard whispers from other students who expressed similar discontent.
“When did we learn this?” Nseliema recalled.
On Monday, she and four other Montgomery County high school students spoke in Annapolis during a forum about the impact of the PARCC tests.
The kids say they aren’t against testing, but they saw problems in how instruction paired with the contents and software of the test. They felt it was one more hoop to jump through, for no reason, since the results wouldn’t count towards their grades or graduation.
Of the five students, Nseliema was the only one who had to take the exam, but each teenager said the testing program had a profound impact on school climate — for their friends, their younger siblings, even for the teachers.
Richard Alillo, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, said he’s pretty lucky he didn’t have to take the PARCC exams. He looked over some of the sample tests, flipped to the math section for elementary school students, and was surprised by what he saw.
For a third-grader, testing for the first time under a time constraint, the PARCC could be overwhelming, Alillo said.
The computerized tests had a toolbar at the top so students could choose items to help them decipher their answers. On the algebra exam, for instance, a protractor was included in the toolbar.
Nseliema said there’s still a problem, though.
“We were given about 15 minutes the day before to get used to the tools,” she said.
But when students had questions about the mechanics of using the tools, Nseliema said the teachers struggled to figure them out, too.
That created stress on the educators, said Walter Johnson High School senior Nicolas Ballon. “Because they were the ones proctoring the exams,” he said. Like the students, the teachers struggled to follow directions for administering the tests.
“They had confusing instructions on how to time each section,” Ballon said.
Melissa Escobar, a Richard Montgomery senior, said her cousins are new to the U.S. and have little English proficiency.
“So obviously, they didn’t know what was going on with these tests,” she said.
Aryana Jones said her instruction was interrupted when regular teachers were excused to proctor exams. That meant substitutes handled her classes, and often couldn’t answer her questions about classwork.
“I don’t think it’s fair to use up all of our resources for a test that doesn’t matter,” said the Clarksburg High senior.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
