Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, or PARCC for short, is a measure of whether students are on track to be successful in College/University and in their careers.

Tremayne Joiner is a junior that takes college algebra and says that the math portion of the PARCC test is challenging even for him, which is true for a lot of our school, considering the amount of honors and AP classes students are taking. If I am taking a AP English class why would I be tested on grade level English? It really just doesn’t make any sense.

“It was pointless,” said Tremayne Joiner. “PARCC does nothing for me; all the questions that they asked were irrelevant from what we were learning at the moment.”

The juniors already have the ACT to worry about his year. Why is it that juniors had to be tested to see if they are College/University ready? If we really wanted to see how many students were college ready, I would just look at how many people are on track to graduate.

“Colleges won’t even look at our scores for PARCC tests; they will look at ACT scores,” said Joiner. “If the ACT scores are high enough, it means that we’re ready for college.”

During the freshman time of PARCC testing, the entire freshman class did not enjoy PARCC testing it at all. Why should they? It’s a test to see how they fare in a school that is 4 years away. They’ve become essentially an experiment.

Alex Guerrero, a freshman that has first period off (normally allowing him to come to school an hour later), didn’t like how he had to wake up earlier just for people to collect data whether he is ready for college or not.

“I didn’t like it,” said Guerrero, “because I had to wake up earlier!”

PARCC is meant to see if students are on track to be successful in College/University. Why would students attending High School in their first year need to take a test to see if they’re ready for College/University?

“I don’t think we should’ve taken it right now,” said Guerrero. “It should’ve been more for upperclassmen because we just got here, and we’re still getting used to High School.”

I don’t get at all why the lower classman would be taking the test. They still have 2 to 3 more years until graduation and they are being tested if they’re ready for college. That is absurd along with the juniors this year having to take the ACT. There are way too many new standardized tests this year of 2014-15 that are causing students to lose valuable class time.

Even with so much time being consumed by testing and classes still going on before, during, and after students are tested, we are held responsible for making up any work they missed because of testing. I’m sure teachers are just as angry, considering students lost time with information that is considered more valuable.
“The district should’ve kept it like how it was in the past,” stated Joiner. “That way no students miss out on class because I missed out on two important tests from two of my classes. Now students have to make up their own work on their own time.”

I think PARCC testing was as pointless as CMAS test or possibly even more so. These tests are to see if we are College ready or not, yet no one really feels like these new standardized tests improved anything. A general survey between all grades tells me that no one really even tried on the tests if they went.

The levels of difficulty and just how much students don’t really care about things we don’t have to do just lowers the amount of time and effort we want to invest in a pointless test.
“It’s not just the PARCC testing that is pointless, it’s all these standardized test that the district has us students take,” said Joiner. “Yeah it shows us where we are, like as a school, but why does that really matter? All that really matters is tests that can help us improve.”
Next year has the potential to include just as many tests, and it will be interesting to hear how to district, and students handle the situation a second time.