This year, the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE) will be replaced by the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test as the state standardized test.

“The PARCC test and the PSAE are totally different assessments, based on different standards,” said HEHS Principal Jim Britton.

While there is some overlap, the PSAE was based on ACT’s standards for college and career readiness, and the PARCC comes out of the common core. Consequently, the PARCC test is much more skill based than the PSAE. Also, the PARCC test is given more frequently and to a larger pool of students.

Unlike the PSAE, the PARCC is given from elementary school all the way up to high school, offering a much broader view of a student’s growth and whether or not they are on track with their learning. This year, it is only being given to juniors, but in the future, it is hoped that the test will be given to any freshman, sophomores, and juniors that are in Algebra 2 and an English class.

“This switch will cause teachers to wean off of preparing for the ACT and transition to preparing for other tests,” Britton said.

There is extreme overlap between the ACT test and the PARCC test. It is highly likely that if one does well on one test, one will do well on the other. Because of this, in the future, it is likely that preparation for the ACT will no longer be dealt with by the teachers, but solely by the individual student.

That does not mean that in-class preparation for the ACT will stop anytime soon, said Junior English and AP Language and Composition Teacher Chris Jenkins.

“In the past, there has been a considerable amount of preparing for the ACT. This is still really important and we will continue to prep for the test, which will be taken on March 3 this school year,” she said.

The ACT is still incredibly important for college entrance. Though the PARCC test will eventually take the place of the traditional ACT, it will be several years before the ACT is no longer given in schools across the country.

“While the PARCC test has not expressly affected the exact material we teach, it will shift what topics are done when. We’re not sure yet which courses we will test,” said Mary Thomas, who teaches Trig/AP Calculus A.

The transition to common core may change the scheduling of curriculum in the future, as well as which topics will be more heavily focused on than others.

“The change to the common core and the PARCC test has changed our curriculum a little but not noticeably,” said Jenkins. “We’ve always had similar standards for our students, but it is nice that by using the common core, it puts teachers across the country on the same page about what fundamental skills should be taught in the typical English course.”

This change to common core and skills-based learning will assign an exact definition about what must be taught in a course, allowing for guidelines within which to more easily rationalize a proper curriculum.