New State Test Prompts Cross-Curriculum Changes

Starting in the 2014-15 school year, Mahwah students will kiss the current state exam system goodbye. New Jersey is rolling out the new “Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers,” or PARCC exam, in the fall of 2014. Administrators in Mahwah say they are in the midst of a three-year plan designed to prepare students for the exam.

The test calls for some big changes. The entire exam will be 100% web-based, so students will be expected to read prompts and questions in a digital format, and type their responses.

The PARCC will also be rigorous, district officials say. All in all, it will take up about nine-and-a-half hours of testing time spread across the school year.

Mahwah English Supervisor Dennis Fare says the new exam is in line with other changes the district has been making over the past two years, namely the conversion of its curriculum to Common Core standards, emphasis on 21st Century skills, and switch to a new teacher evaluation system.

“The whole basis of the shift is the focus on college and career readiness,” Fare said in an interview last week. “And, Mahwah is ahead of the game in terms of preparation. All of the teachers, staff, administrators, and students have really jumped on board, it’s awesome.”

The exam itself, which will be administered to 3rd through 11th graders, is based in Language Arts skills. However, students will be expected to write about content across all subject areas on the exam, prompting the district to coordinate across all departments for curriculum changes and test preparations, Fare said.

On the exam, students might have to craft a historical account of an event, or complete a written analysis based on real-life scientific data.

As a result, the schools’ departments “are really getting on the same page,” Fare said. PARCC-type questions are being woven into classes across all disciplines, he said.

The exam consists of several different types of questions.

The first is a Research Simulation Task, or RST, which asks students to write responses to real world data presented to them in various formats, including YouTube video clips.

The exam “asks kids to link real world data to the concepts they learn about,” Mahwah Science Supervisor Kristen Trabona said. “That’s a huge step from Page One, Chapter One.”

The exam also asks students to write a narrative piece based on their knowledge of “authentic texts,” like short stories they read in their classes, Fare said. Students will also be expected to complete a literary analysis of two or more texts.

To prepare for the new types of questions on the test, the district administered a pre-test to all high schoolers at the beginning of the year. From the test, administrators say there were two main things classes this year focused on as areas in which student skills needed to improve.

One area, Fare said, was to help students develop a written voice, especially through the use of strong introduction and conclusion paragraphs in their responses. And, the other, is to help students effectively integrate information from sources like data charts, graphs, written passages and video clips, into their written responses.

In addition to integrating PARCC prep into English classes, the supervisors say they’ve been working to address the issues by integrating components of test prep into all Mahwah classes.

Art classes are using video clips to explain concepts. All of the text books newly purchased by the district have an online component to better acclimate students to an online interface. And, last year, the English department added a formal research paper requirement into its curriculum, as well as more classic literature and non-fiction into its required texts.

The changes, the supervisors say, are positive.

“The test makes sense,” Fare said.

The results of the preparations for it, Trabona said, “have been more consistent writing samples from our students. [In science classes], we didn’t worry too much about the Language Arts stuff. Now, kids are producing valuable pieces of writing along with knowing the content.”

Next month, the district plans an evaluation of all of the changes its implemented thus far in preparation for the new test. All of the high schoolers will take another pre-exam, and the results will be compared to those from the beginning of the year. Teachers and supervisors will then evaluate the results, and implement based on them, a plan of test prep for next year.

“We already know a lot of what we will be doing next year is getting the kids more access to web-based programs, so they become more comfortable with that,” Trabona said.

“A lot of next year will be reinforcing what we’ve been doing for the past two,” Fare said. “There is a plan, and the teachers and students are totally on board. At the end of the day, it’s very exciting.”

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