Schools

Tech Upgrades Needed, Funding Sought in Montville Schools

The technology upgrades are required for the new 2015 PARCC state test, which is an unfunded mandate.

At the last Montville School Board meeting, Superintendent Paul Fried walked through PARCC Field Testing, which will be done this school year.

The new state test “PARCC will replace NJ ASK starting next year 2014-15 school year and will be directly aligned to Common Core,” according to Andrea Selvaggi, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction. “The NJ ASK does not assess every standard deeply enough to generate very specific data for you, but the PARCC will.”

The PARCC test is being field tested during the 2013-14 school year and will be implemented next school year, 2014-15. The district will send a letter to inform parents.

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PARCC will test a student’s knowledge of the new common core standards adopted by the State.

PARCC “It will test deeper than NJ ASK and will test more,” said Selvaggi. “Children will have about eight hours of testing two times throughout the school year.”

Selvaggi gave a break down of the PARCC test and common core standards at a recent meeting about the new elementary report cards, which also reflect the new standards and rolled out this first quarter. 

Last spring, Selvaggi went to each school and spoke with faculty on changes due to the common core.

The NJ ASK test this spring “will start to move toward testing for the common core,” said Fried. “The new (common core) assessments are multi layered where … the actual test question involves using a variety of parts of your mathematical thinking to solve the problem.”

Last year the NJ ASK test was aligned to the common core standards for grades 3-5 and for grades 6-8, they were aligned in ELA, said Selvaggi.

District Tech Upgrades

In doing the pilot testing, “it gives us a chance to tell if technology is going to be adequate … a year from the spring and familiarize the teachers of the kinds of questions that are being questions and the kinds of demands being asked of our kids.”

Fried said that in participating in this field testing, “we’ll get a perspective on what does it mean in terms of location, in terms of time, in terms of the headsets the children need.”

A new issue that has surfaced with PARCC is the fact that it’s 100 percent electronic. With the NJ ASK, the entire school could be tested at the same time, but with PARCC, kids will be tested in batches.

He said they have two options for PARCC testing:

  • Use computers in their labs and spend less in buying new devices
  • Not using computers in the schools’ labs and buying new devices.

The issue with using existing computer labs for state testing is “we would have to shut down all instructional programs” that need the labs during the testing weeks. “We don’t want to stop instruction at weeks at a time to test our children,” said Fried.

Board Member John Morella brought up the issue of testing integrity and possible cheating, but Fried said that the test is different each time and questions are scrambled. This is possible because the test is electronic.

The questions “are on the same instructional level” and are asking students to perform the same functions and concepts.

“The good news in this purchase of this equipment is that we’ll have more technology for students and teachers for their everyday instructional program the other nine months of the year,” said Fried. “We’ll infuse our schools with technology more than we ever have before.”

He said that the Chromebook is cheaper than a regular laptop but has some disadvantages such as a full Microsoft office.

The company responsible for the testing program will be visiting with the district on Dec. 18 to see if the schools are on track to being able to support the electronic testing, in terms of the infrastructure wireless capability, bandwidth, etc …

“We have enhanced our IT support over the last two years. Since my arrival, we’ve added two IT members to our team,” said Fried. “We’ll see as time goes by” if more support is needed.

Funding the Technology

“It’s another unfunded mandate,” said Board president Karen Cortellino. The district has already started exploring how to fund additional technology.

Board Member John Morella asked if they would purchase equipment in batches or “all in one shot” and Fried said that whichever way they do it, they have to be prepared for Spring 2015 “no matter what.”

Fried added that the board should expect “to see in our budget a good amount of dollars being spent on laptaps or chromebooks because we need many of these instruments to adequately have enough of these devices to test our children.”

The entire purchase could potentially be out of next year’s budget, said Fried, adding that they may purchase equipment all at once but pay for it over a period of time. 


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