The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, represents the new form of standardized testing in 12 states, in addition to the District of Columbia. At its zenith, PARCC represented almost half of all U.S. states, but that number has been dwindling. Now, with the few crumbs of power it has left, PARCC testing has officially begun.
   

As a student who has undertook the challenge that is PARCC testing, I can say that I found the test lackluster. I enjoy tests, have never made anything below a superior on the Benchmarking Assessment, have had grades above a 90 percent consecutively for all of my schooling, participate in advanced classes, and actually have a chance of being the valedictorian of my class. As someone who should have had no problem with the PARCC’s new testing format, I found the converse to be the actual situation.

Many questions on the Geometry portion of the PARCC test, I had not been adequately prepared for. The problem may have been with the education I received from my school district, but I believe that the fault lies with the company in charge of administering the test. The format of the test makes me feel as if the designers rushed, and compared to the more comprehensive and well-structured Benchmarking exams that students are used to the PARCC exams just seem to be unfinished. Many of the options that were present in the practice tests were not available in the actual tests, and this could lead one to believe that Pearson Education may care more about the monetary gains from their test than about students actually benefiting educationally from the experience.
   

In theory, there are benefits to having a single, computer-based test. Every child would have an equal basis to showcase their talents and faults. This information could help teachers to greatly aid in an individual child’s education. In practice, Pearson Education is so preoccupied with protecting their “intellectual property” that teachers will not get enough information to help their students until they have graduated. As for the randomly generated questions, on the mathematics portion at least, the pool of questions is remarkably low. The questions that do alternate are of greatly varying difficulty, resulting in some students being unable to solve some questions, while another student of equal ability may breeze through the test. At the very least, a mathematics question’s alternate should be of the same subject. This would ensure that students with the same ability and education would get near identical results. As it is, some students had to skip almost half of their tests, although some of that can be amounted to foolishness on the student’s part.

The PARCC test has showcased an eerie lack of care on the part of Pearson Education. The test seemed to have been thrown together into an appalling mess of mistakes. Although the first year of the test is supposed to set the standards, I believe that the standards will not be set very high. If the PARCC test remains as it is, the state of our education will truly be dismal.