Colorado students began taking PARCC tests this week (Andy Cross, The Denver Post).
At 8 a.m. Monday, about 100 students at Sheridan High School southwest of Denver arrived as scheduled for their first exposure to a new generation of online standardized tests meant to measure their critical thinking and reasoning.
The district had put the system through a test run on Friday and everything worked perfectly, said Michael Clough, the Sheridan School District superintendent. But when it really counted, students at Sheridan High trying to log into the testing system got one of those frustrating hourglasses that just keep spinning and spinning, Clough said.
Within an hour, five kids were able to log into the system, he said. Within two hours, maybe 50 percent of students were able to start. Most were able to get in within three hours, but in other instances the test would not properly function once students were able to log in and begin taking the tests, Clough said.
Eventually, all students completed the tests in math and English language arts, part of Colorado’s membership in a 12-state testing consortium known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
Clough said Monday night he could not say for certain what caused the problem and who or what was to blame. He initially said it “might be our network, it might be our firewall.” But Clough said that his tech department assured him that the tests runs Friday, conducted with PARCC and testing vendor Pearson, came off perfectly, which to him suggested it was an outside issue.
“We’re deducing had it been on our end, we would have never have gotten through,” Clough said. “But I don’t know for sure. We need to be figuring it out.”
Michael Clough (Sheridan School District photo).
He added: “I wonder what the quality of your assessment looks like once you got in. The kids were extremely frustrated. I can’t say that I blame them. My kids are great. They are patient, they will do as their told. But it just isn’t set up very well … We probably should not have been an early adopter. Maybe some of the bugs might have been worked out.”
The official PARCC testing window opens next Monday, but more than four in 10 Colorado districts took the opportunity to start a week early. State officials say 75 districts with more than 450,000 students say they intend to start PARCC testing this week, including some of the biggest: Jefferson County Public Schools, the Douglas County School District, Aurora Public Schools, Cherry Creek School District, Colorado Springs School District 11 and the Boulder Valley School District.
Clough said representatives from Pearson have promised to arrive early Tuesday at another district campus where the next round of tests is taking place to make sure things work properly.
The tiny suburban district with high poverty rates has been on the state’s accountability watch list for poor academic performance
Sheridan High was the first and only school in the district to test Monday, and the entire day was given over to PARCC testing, Clough said. “We’re not of the luxury where we can go out and buy a computer for every student, so we have to use all our labs for testing,” he said.
Other superintendents, particularly in rural areas, .
Other districts reported no major problems Monday. Durango Superintendent Dan Snowberger, who chaired , said testing came off smoothly. In the Boulder Valley district, “it went OK,” Superintendent Bruce Messinger said in a text message. He said the Internet went down for a period of time, which was disruptive.
We will be updating this post throughout the week with reports of the PARCC rollout. Have a tip about how testing is going in a district? You can reach me at egorski@denverpost.com or 303-954-1971.
