October 30, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 5 Franklin Lakes Middle school selected to hold PARCC Field Test by Frank J. McMahon The Franklin Avenue Middle School has been selected to participate in the 2014 PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) Field Test in eighth grade English language arts in both the performance based assessment and the end of year assessment. Superintendent Frank Romano said he agreed to participate in the field test after speaking with Principal Joseph Keiser and the three teachers whose classes would take the assessment. “I consider it an honor and an oppor- tunity to have been selected for the 2014 PARCC Field Test,” Romano said, “and I’m grateful to our middle school principal and our three language arts teachers who are willing to take part in the field test because it will serve our schools and stu- dents well. It’s a great experience for both the students and the teachers because we’ll get a sense of what these PARCC tests are going to be like.” The students taking the field test will also take the NJ ASK test this year, but in the 2014-15 school year, all students will taking the PARCC test, which will replace NJ ASK. A student will participate in the field test by either taking both the performance based and end of year assessments in one content area, or taking either test in one content area. No student will participate in the entire PARCC assessment and most students will take only one component in one content area, which will help the dis- trict manage time during the field test. “One of the factors we had to weigh heavily was the additional time away from normal instruction this field test would require,” Romano added, “and would that outweigh the value of taking the PARCC Field Test. All the teachers and the prin- cipal agreed that it would indeed have a greater value than the instructional time we would lose.” Romano provided information about the PARCC test pointing out that New Jersey is developing new generation assessments with other states and the District of Colum- bia as part of the PARCC consortium. He said that assessments in English language arts/literacy and mathematics based on Common Core State Standards are being developed and will be used in all states in the consortium. In preparation for the first admin- istration of the PARCC assessments in the 2014-15 school year, Romano said a PARCC Field Test will be administered in the spring of 2014 to more than one million students across the PARCC states. According to Romano, the primary purposes of the PAARC Field Test are to examine the quality of the items in the test so PARCC can build assessment forms for the 2014-15 school year, to test assessment administrative procedures, and to give schools and districts the opportunity to experience the administration of PARCC assessments. Romano said the assessments will be comprised of two components. The per- formance based assessment in English lan- guage arts/literacy will be administered at any time between March 24 and April 11, 1014 and will involve literature analysis, narrative writing, and research simula- tion tasks. Students will read passages and write several pieces to demonstrate they can read and understand sufficiently com- plex texts independently, and write effec- tively when using and analyzing sources. The performance based assessment in mathematics is also scheduled to be administered within the same time period, and will involve tasks requiring students to demonstrate they can solve problems involving key knowledge skills, express mathematical reasoning and construct mathematical arguments, and apply con- cepts to solve and model real world prob- lems. The end of year assessments in both language arts/literacy and mathematics are scheduled to be administered between May 5 and June 6, 2014 and will involve tasks requiring students to demonstrate their content specific acquired skills and knowledge. The English language arts/literacy assessment will require students to demon- strate their ability to comprehend a range of sufficiently complex text, including litera- ture, literary nonfiction, and informational text from history/social studies, science, and technical subjects; engage in the read- ing of texts that require them to draw con- clusions; interpret the meanings of words and phrases and technical vocabulary; and compare, integrate, and synthesize ideas presented in texts. The mathematics assessment will require students to demonstrate their abil- ity to solve multi-step problems concep- tual questions, applications, and carry out substantial procedures. The end of year assessments will include extended tasks, including innovative item types, but unlike the performance based assessments, all responses will be scored by machine.