Parents and teachers find the PARCC test challenging

Do you think you could pass the controversial Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test? More than 200 parents and teachers gathered at Middlesex County College Thursday evening to find out. 

The "Take The PARCC Test" event was organized by the Middlesex County Education Association to allow parents and educators to experience the test first-hand.

Middlesex County resident Jacklyn Brown. who has a son in fifth grade, took the fifth grade math and English test.

"I'm definitely not smarter than a fifth-grader," she said. "The questions were very difficult; I scored poorly. There's more than one possible answer for some of the questions, and I think it's going to confuse a lot of the kids and it's going to stress them out and it's going to give them a lot of anxiety. I think PARCC should go away."

Denise Torrella of Bayonne took the sixth grade PARCC test and had a tough time with several questions.

"I was looking to read a whole paragraph, and there was no whole paragraph and then it asked me in another box to read the box and identify what a word meant, so it confused me," Torrella said.

Melissa Katz of Ewing, who is getting her master's degree in education, was curious about the PARCC practice test, so she took it and did not do well.

"On the English language arts for the high school all I kept thinking to myself was, if I was in high school and I had to take this test I absolutely would have not graduated, had it been a graduation requirement," she said. "It's worded in such a way that it's hard to understand what they're really asking. It was hard and confusing."

Gloria from Clark took the sixth grade PARCC language arts test.

"I think it's very difficult and I also feel like if I had to put myself from a student's perspective, I think it would be very challenging for them," she said.

Another parent, Prashanb Joshi of Edison, took the eighth grade PARCC math test.

"This is a little bit tricky test," he said. "You have to read the question three to four times to understand what it's asking."

Another parent lamented "there's too much information. You can't remember what you're reading and it gets confusing - the fourth grade student will have a very tough time with the math test, there's part A, part B and part C, and they have to analyze all of it -- if they lose one step they cannot get the question right -- it will be very stressful for them."

Fifth grade teacher Valerie from Edison had a tough time doing the PARCC test here students will be taking.

"There's too many things going on here right now and my students would lose their attention very easily with this," she said. "This is just too much for them to be reading."

Somerset resident Anne Cisco took the fourth grade PARCC test.

"I was a fourth grade teacher for many, many years and it's ridiculous complicated." Cisco said. " I'm afraid that kids wouldn't be able to sort it out."

One third grade girl, Natalie of Edison, took her PARCC practice test and said it gave her a headache.

"I did the reading test and it was hard and it is a long test," she said. "My eyes were blurry after it, I was tired and it wasn't good. I feel like the articles and the text was hard to understand because they were very long -- two hours I think -- it would be hard to read all of them, I was not happy with it."