Wilmette School District 39 officials said, overall, they’ve been pleased with the outcome of the PARCC test.
The Illinois State Board of Education recently released the results of mathematics and English language arts and literacy tests known as the PARCC – the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers – tests.
The tests, which replaced Illinois’ earlier ISAT standardized tests, were taken by elementary and high school students across the state in the last school year. Controversy about the value of the tests, and the burden some educators felt they placed on school districts, teachers and students, continued even as those results became available.
Wilmette Public School District 39 was one of a few Illinois school districts to participate in a PARCC pilot project during the 2013-14 school year. District Superintendent Raymond Lechner spoke Dec. 9 to the Pioneer Press about the district’s experience with the first year of official testing.
How did PARCC testing go in your school district this year?
It actually went smoothly, in terms of implementation. We participated in the PARCC pilot during the 2013-14 year, which gave us a lot of information on scheduling and implementation and the system support we would need, so we went fairly smoothly.
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What, if any, difficulties or challenges did the district have in implementing the test?
Occasionally a student’s access to the online test was interrupted, but because we had the support available, again because of the practice from the years before, we were able to deal with that.
What changes would you like to see made to the evaluation of results?
The changes we want I think we’re getting. The test itself took an inordinate amount of time and it really did pull from instruction, and take instructional time from kids, so we gave the state a lot of feedback in the spring, in the summer, and fall. Now they’ve collapsed the test into one testing session rather than two, so we’re happy to see that.
How is the district viewing its results from this year’s test, as successes or as showing more work to do?
We were impressed with our results. Our scores were higher than the state or the PARCC consortium … We’re also looking at this as baseline data. We’ll look at where we start and then we make changes, and we’ll look for growth from our baseline year.
What plans does the district have for next year’s testing?
At this point we’re just going to be tweaking (the test). First, we have to get the testing schedule set so we can maximize instructional time, then organize technical support at each of the schools.