Seeing their high school students navigate a number of assessments each year, school officials in Lincolnshire and Buffalo Grove praised Illinois’ recent move to eliminate the PARCC exam for high school students next spring.
“There is a sense of relief that PARCC has been lifted off our shoulders,” said Stevenson High School spokesman Jim Conrey. “Between the state-mandated SAT and our own rigorous curriculum, we already have ample assessments in place to measure the academic performance of our students.”
The Illinois State Board of Education announced Monday the state will pay to give 11th graders SAT college entrance exams next spring, ditching the controversial state PARCC assessment for high school students. The state had administered PARCC only twice, in the spring of 2015 and 2016, following dismal test scores and thousands of students skipping the exams.
Still, third- through eighth-graders will continue taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers in reading and math, exams designed to prepare students for college and work. The state tests have drawn opposition from families who questioned the amount of testing at school — part of a national movement that has prompted some states to stop using the PARCC exams, which are based on Common Core standards.
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At the high school level, the PARCC exams took away from key instruction time, Illinois school administrators have said, as tests piled up in the spring, including Advanced Placement exams for honors-level students and a college entrance exam in many districts.
Educators at Stevenson High School and elsewhere criticized the PARCC test from its inception in the spring of 2015. This past March, Stevenson Superintendent Eric Twadell called the PARCC exam a “complete disaster” during a district board meeting.
A spokeswoman for Township High School District 214, which manages Buffalo Grove High School, thanked state education officials for eliminating the PARCC exam and reducing the number of assessments for students.
“We commend the Illinois State Board of Education and Superintendent Tony Smith for listening to educators on this topic and looking at the amount of time high school students already spend taking standardized tests,” said Jennifer Delgado, District 214 media manager.
For many years in the past, the state gave the free and popular ACT college entrance exam to roughly 140,000 high school juniors. ACT’s contract expired, and there was no state-paid college entrance exam for students in spring 2016, although some districts paid for it on their own.
ISBE chose this past school year to switch to the SAT, which some school administrators have said is expected to be to given in April 2017.
The recently revamped SAT includes reading, math, and writing and language tests, as well as an optional essay. The state has paid for juniors to take a separate writing test in the past, while taking the ACT, and the state expects to do so again in the SAT spring testing.
As for students at elementary and middle schools in Illinois, they still will have to take PARCC exams in reading and math. Many educators at elementary and middle school districts in Lincolnshire and Buffalo Grove also praised the elimination of PARCC at the high school level, even though the state’s decision doesn’t directly affect their students.
At Lincolnshire-Prairie View Elementary District 103, superintendent Scott Warren said he was happy for Stevenson and other high schools.
“It is a positive change that will enable high school students the opportunity to take a college entrance exam that also aligns to the Illinois state standards,” he said.
Diane Rado of the baiduhai contributed to this report.
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