PARCC test reactions from NJ students who’ve taken it

New Jersey students are reacting to the first round of new standardized testing that may wrap up early next week due to interruptions from Mother Nature over the past few days.

For students in most New Jersey districts, the first week of March hosted the initial run of the controversial PARCC exam, named after the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. The test has been promoted as a better measuring tool of student progress, falling in line with Common Core State Standards and encouraging more critical thinking.

Lexy Heflin, a sixth-grader at Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School in Freehold, said the questions were certainly a different style than she remembers from past standardized tests, as was her approach to answering them.

"Some of the questions were just worded very weirdly," she said. "The NJ ASK -- you just read it once and you could answer. The PARCC - you had to keep reading them over until you figured out what it was actually asking you."

She began the English portion of the exam on Tuesday, along with Monroe Township High School freshman Vinnie Abene.

"You had to think a lot," Abene said. "You had to go back to the passage and scroll through every paragraph that was there just to find your answer."

Still, both Heflin and Abene said they finished with plenty of time to spare in the 75-minute window. The amount of questions each day is exponentially lower than what students were given in the past.

A number of students cited technical difficulties before the test-taking period could even begin. With the PARCC, computers and tablets replace paper and pencil.

"Some kids couldn't get on the test for a while, and then the computer person had to come in to help," said fifth-grader Shaun Siegel of Brookside Elementary School in Monroe.

In Abene's assigned room, keyboards weren't working for several students, and at least one question was missing from his exam.

The test's computer set-up was a bit too much for Jacob Delutis of Ewing, a fourth-grader at Parkway Elementary School.

"When you're typing on the keyboard, it's just hard to write the words faster," he said, referring to an open-ended question on the test. "I would change the computer to the pencil and paper."

Despite the obstacle, Delutis said he believes he performed well.

Gianna Verdarami, a fellow Brookside fifth-grader, said her first encounter with PARCC was "really easy" and not as bad as she expected.

"A lot of people were saying the teachers couldn't pass the test, so it just got me really worried," Verdarami said.

"A lot of people were saying the teachers couldn't pass the test, so it just got me really worried," Verdarami said.

PARCC has been a hot-button issue for the last few months, especially among parents, insisting the exam would bite into instruction time and ask unnecessarily difficult questions. Many parents instructed their children to refuse the test.

Another round of PARCC is scheduled for later this school year.