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Budget reductions trim District 161 teaching posts, may cut 9 bus routes

PARCC-wise, it’s “so far, so good” in Flossmoor School District 161.

Students in grades three through five started taking the new state-mandated exam on Feb. 25 and testing, so far, has gone smoothly, Superintendent Craig Doster said at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.

The first round of testing is ending in the lower grades and the exam is moving to Parker Junior High School. Special education students will start taking the test on Friday and students in regular classrooms start answering PARCC questions on Monday.

PARCC – it stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers – is based on the national Common Core curriculum standards and is being administered for the first time this year, replacing the state’s Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT).  The first PARCC testing period lasts through March 25. Students will be re-evaluated in a second testing period from April 27 to May 22.

The new test is designed to be administered by computer and to measure higher-order skills, such as critical thinking, communicating effectively and problem solving. Students in grades three through 12 are being tested in English language arts/literacy and math.

Last month, Doster sent a letter to district parents expressing his concerns about PARCC, questioning the need for an exam that is so time-consuming and may be “overly complex.” District officials, he said, are concerned about “the amount of instructional time that will be lost to testing, the usefulness of the results, and most of all, the impact on students.”  

Homewood School District 153 Superintendent Dale Mitchell sent a similar letter to his educational community and complaints about PARCC have been common across Illinois, and the nation.

But Doster said this week that he is pleased with how the District 161 schools have managed the first phase of PARCC testing. PARCC, a computer test, places severe demands on school technology. In District 161, the technology is working well, Doster said, adding that school staff worked hard to prepare for the tests. A major part of that preparation was making sure the technology was up to the task, he said.

“We did sample tests and, during one of them, took down the computer system just to see what happened,” he said. “We were constantly checking the computers during the prep process. If we saw any problems, we called the testing company.”

Doster was asked if today’s students might be more comfortable with a computer test since many have been around modern technology most of their lives.

“I think that may be true,” he said. “It is almost native with them today. You see 3-year-olds in the doctor’s office playing with their parents’ iPhone. They know what they are doing. They are familiar with the technology from a very early age.”

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