By Kai-Lou Yue
Business Manager
Parents in the Westford community have spearheaded the process of allowing students from the three randomly selected junior English classes of Kimberly Hart, Rebecca Ingerslev, and Lynn Bonakdar, the option of opting out of taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment, the potential replacement for MCAS. Test takers are scheduled to miss the first three blocks on April 9th and 10th, and the first two blocks on April 11th.
Bill Olsen, superintendent of Westford Public Schools, responding to these actions from parents, stated that the state is not taking the position of allowing students to officially opt out of taking this mandatory trial test, and he strongly encourages students to participate.
However, despite there being no formal opt out policy, he added, “If the student’s parents really object, we can’t make a student take it.”
Other members of administration, such as Dean Mike Parent, have also said that students who choose not to take the test will not be penalized; if they wanted to skip the field testing and attend their usual classes, there would be no repercussion.
“If people opt out, I’m not going to look at it as an act of defiance against me or against Mr. Antonelli or Mr. Ware or Ms. Murphy,” said Parent. “If people opt out, then that’s what they decide … I see where PARCC is coming from; they’re doing a field study of the test before they develop the test, but I can see from your point of view that you don’t want to be lab rats.”
Teachers who are having their classes missed because of trial testing are also understandably frustrated about losing class time. But, as Hart says, she understands why this is necessary.
“It’s an imperfect situation, because certainly it puts stress on students who are going to have to miss class and add this to their already full plates, but at the same time, the test makers need some sort of results and feedback … It’s sort of a no-win situation,” said Hart.
Originally, Principal James Antonelli planned to provide the students with community service hours for taking the test, as well as an additional free lunch, but the general frustration of students who would miss important classes, such as AP’s, remained, because of the large amount of time students will be taking off from their classes.
“I think it should be something people volunteer for because you do get community service hours. And, maybe … we should have an advisory day, it shouldn’t be during school, because even though they say that we won’t be penalized for it, we’re still going to miss class time,” said Zoe Cole, a junior in Bonakdar’s English class.
Some parents of these students felt similarly about the situation. Vice President of the Westford Education Foundation and mother of junior Katie Caster, Marsha Caster, believes it is not fair to set an entire class back to accommodate the few students taking the test, but she wishes that there was another way to help the students catch up.
She added, “If teachers could make up lessons after school that would be a perfect solution.”
However, despite all the confusion and frustration with the field testing for the PARCC, Parent reminds students that a similar situation occurred with the introduction of the MCAS; given time, if the PARCC is established as the new statewide test, it will eventually become as normal as the MCAS is today.
“They didn’t cave in with the MCAS years ago when it started, and there was an uproar from communities … PARCC is only impacting a small percentage of students whereas MCAS was 400 students here, so 25%, and here PARCC is probably impacting less than 5% of students,” said Parent.
