March has brought to Bernard’s High School a variety of wonderful things. The first wisps of Spring have arrived, and many students are enjoying their foray into the second semester of the school year. One other wonderful thing introduced to the student population during March was the PARCC exam. Our readers may be perplexed at this point- an exam, wonderful? Yes- wonderful. This new computerized and standardized test was administered the week of March 3-6, and the opinion of the student body has never been more on the contrary to past student opinion of standardized tests. A majority of students lauded the test for a very special reason. Psychometricians at Pearson (if they even choose to read The Crimson) may be thinking to themselves as to why the test was so completely praised. They may be chuckling and patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on the enjoyable and entertaining reading sections that pepper the ELA portion of the exam, or perhaps the trying but not overly difficult mathematical problems which are contained in the Mathematics section of the exam, or even perhaps the implementation of computer technology to take the test! To the test-makers, there is no doubt that all the praise is due to the use of computers. They without a doubt thought to themselves, “I know what these young folk enjoy! I see them calling each other on their Ipads and texting from their Macintoshes, I see them spend hours taking selfies of their friends to post on the iCloud! They would love a test that is on a computer!” The test-makers were about halfway correct in their attribution to the positive opinion.
If anything at all was gained from the PARCC, it is that modern does not always mean better- sometimes good ol’ pencil and scantron is more effective. Students praised the exam due to the computers, yes, but they praised it because the computers failed. As any teen knows, computers and the internet are unreliable. Connection to WiFi is never certain, to the chagrin of many. The PARCC exam is no exception to this rule. During the week of March 3, the computers which were used to take the PARCC had a technical glitch which delayed the administration of the test, and this, paired with the inclement weather that caused many delayed openings that week, caused a great shortage of school time. Schedules that week fluctuated between 9 to 18 minute classes, and to the joint surprise and dismay of the teachers, no information could be taught. The students were overjoyed. The PARCC exam, in all its failure, actually gave the students a week of no education. Students had time to work on the overabundance of assignments that teachers seem to enjoy distributing while avoiding any new knowledge or new homework. The PARCC exam was not a burden, as students once believed standardized tests to be, but instead a blessing. A computerized blessing in disguise.
