It seems as though every few years, the Department of Education comes up with a new standardized test for students who go to public school in America. But, what do these tests do for the students? Do they affect your college acceptance like the ACTs?
Unlike how the ACT helps you get accepted into college, exams like PARCC appear to not have much weight in a student’s future. Colleges don’t take into account your score on the PARCC exam.
There are two different types of tests according to ASCD.com (a global educational website): aptitude tests and achievement tests. Aptitude tests determine how well students perform in a given environment, these are the tests that actually matter like the ACT and the SAT. Achievement tests are what the School Board relies on when discerning whether or not a school is effective at teaching its students. The new all-online PARCC exam is an achievement test. Currently, 20 states in the U.S. are giving the option for schools to use the PARCC exam and only ten of those states are actually taking the test. Illinois has the most schools in the country taking it: 2,083,097 according to EducationWeek.com.
The test is still in a developmental stage and obviously there are a lot of issues. Having the entire country taking an online test at the same time on only a few dedicated servers is going to cause a lot of glitches for those taking it. One such student at Vernon Hills High School who took the test was Heesung Noh (9), who explained, “There were a lot of glitches. The tech guys handled it pretty well, but we couldn’t get the test going for about an hour.” Imagine the chaos that would ensue if the whole country had to take it at the same time. Another Vernon Hills student who took the test, Peyton Foster (9), said, “For one of the portions of the exam we had an entire hour to do twelve simple questions. I couldn’t get logged in for about 45 minutes, but I still finished because it was just so easy. The entire test was unbelievably easy.”
The PARCC test, while still in a transition stage, has the potential to be a valuable test in both Illinois and the rest of America. Some kinks will have to be worked out, like the technical piece of it; however, after a few more years of experimenting the PARCC will likely be a lot more efficient.