Montville Schools to Run State Pilot Testing

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.

Pilot Testing

“We initially have been approached by the state to pilot the PARCC test in two of our elementary schools,” said Fried. “We decided in fact that we would say yes, so that we would have some experience in using our technology and seeing what the test would be like.”

Then the state reached out again and said “they have the need for some expanded field testing and ask if we will do field testing in each of our seven schools. We also feel that is an advantage and we said yes,” said Fried.

At Cedar Hill, they chose three different pilots to be tested, but “I have appealed back to the state … to eliminate one of those” tests. “The other schools have either two or one, except for the high school,” said Fried, adding that he felt it would be a “burden” for Cedar Hill to have three.

The test that the district has asked the state to remove is the 5th Grade ELA test, but they haven’t gotten word back yet.

Some pilot testing will be done in the spring from March 24 – April 11 and some will be end-of-year testing from May 5 – June 6.

The spring test is a problem-based assessment and covers 75 percent of the year’s material while the end-of-year covers 95 percent,

Here’s a breakdown of the PARCC Pilot testing to be done at each school:

• Cedar Hill—A PARCC Pilot Test for one class in ELA for 5th grade and two classes in math for 4th grade (one in the spring and one end-of-year)
• Hilldale—Two tests for two classes in math for 3rd grade (one in the spring and one end-of-year)
• Valley View— Two tests in math for 4th grade (one in the spring and one end-of-year)
  William Mason—Two tests in ELA for 3rd grade (both end-of-year)
• Woodmont—Two tests in ELA for 3rd grade (both in spring)
• Lazar —Two tests in ELA in 8th grade (both in spring)
• MTHS—Two tests in ELA for 9th grade (both in spring)
• MTHS Geometry—Two tests in geometry for mixed grades (both in end-of-year)
• MTHS Algebra 2—Two tests in geometry for mixed grades (both in end-of-year)

There is an overlap between the NJ ASK and the pilot testing, which will occur with the end-of-year testing. Students will take NJ ASK first “and then sometime a couple weeks later, we’ll have them take the pilot if they’re one of the classes selected” so that “the children are fresh and not worn out.”

Board Member Jackie Ritschel added that she didn’t want parents to be concerned with children overlapping tests because NJ ASK is going to be replaced anyways.”

Picking the Classes

Fried said that there are typically three classes/sections in each grade.

“If we’re looking at spring testing and end-of-year testing in the same grade level, we’ll expose all three classes to the test,” said Fried.

One class will do both and the other two will do either or. Hilldale, Cedar Hill and Valley View fall into this situation.

For the ones where there are two tests for two classes, both during spring or end-of-year, “we’re asking our principals to almost at random choose two classes. We want to chosse a class that at the secondary level (not an honorary level or enriched class) to choose classes that are representative of students from all different achievement levels so that there is a wide variety of learners who are having the experience.”

Purpose of Pilot Testing

“These tests do not count for our students” and prents will not get a grade for their kids because “it’s simply a way for the state to begin understand if they produced viable and valid test questions,” said Fried. “They also have to understand if the time allocated to the testing period is the right amount of time.”

Selvaggi gave an example of test time. It’s 85 minutes for the ELA pilot testing and an additional 45 minutes is added for those who need more time.

In total, there will be nine days of testing for the PARCC pilots:

Spring Pilot:

• 3 days for ELA
• 2 days for math

End-of-year

• 2 days for ELA
• 2 for math

Students will be tested “a little over an hour per day as it’s set up now, but that can change after they get the results from the field testing,” said Selvaggi, adding that 3rd grade is a little less than an hour and all other grades is a little over an hour each day.

“The computer will electronically tell them how long it took a child to finish,” said Fried. “I think the kids will find it a bit interesting, because it’s online, there’s no pressure, there are no results they’re going to have to worry about.”

Check back with Patch for an article on what technology upgrades the schools need and how the district plans to fund it.