Most students know that the ACT is a major implication for college readiness and that all colleges view the exam. This spring a new exam will be introduced to test the new common core standards, another source for colleges to view. The age of the PARCC test has begun.

The PARCC stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.

Illinois and 17 other states will be testing domestic students third grade and up.

“Kaneland was one of many schools in Illinois that was given the opportunity to pilot the PARCC test this year,” Vice Principal Mike Rice said.

According to the official website of the PARCC test, the reasoning behind the new test is to score students based on a common K-12 course of assessments. The K-12 course is set behind five long term goals: the test will help students be college and career ready, it will be set to manage all common core standards, it supports educators in classrooms, it will apply more technological scenarios and will advance students’ accountability.

“The PARCC test is used to measure students on the newly implemented common core standards. This will be a good thing as a practice test, that should benefit students and teachers,” Teacher Coach James Horne said.

The main focus is to test all students’ knowledge about math and english that will meet standards for college and career readiness.

These tests also differ from the ACT because the PARCC test will focus on application more than the ACT. No practice questions have been given to Kaneland’s staff, although practice questions are available online at the PARCC website.

“The PARCC test will challenge the ability of students to apply their knowledge more so than the ACT.  [It is] seldom to never, that this kind of thing rolls out with glitches,” Horne said.

Students should not expect these tests to go anywhere soon. In fact, according to the PARCC website, the U.S Department of Education provided $186 million dollars worth of grants to support all development and design for the next generation assessment.

According to Rice, two new tests were created to test application, when the new common core standards were released. These two new tests are called the PARCC test and the Smarter Balanced test. Both of theses tests are alike because they both test primarily application with math and english.