State Pilot Testing at Montville Schools to be Discussed

Superintendent Paul Fried will discuss the PARCC Pilot Assessments at the Tuesday's Montville School board meeting, which starts at 7:30 p.m. This meeting was originally scheduled for last Tuesday, but weather canceled it. 

Back in November, Fried announced some changes to the pilot tests.

“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.

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.

For a breakdown of the PARCC Pilot testing to be done at each school, go to this Patch article.

However, the PARCC test “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.”