Amanda Oglesby

@OglesbyAPP

The U.S. ranks 27th out of 34 countries for student math excellence

Toms River Regional school district spent more than %241 million to prepare for the PARCC tests

Michelle Green decided her daughter has suffered enough from standardized testing after bouts of stress and class changes that followed from the test results.

When the Oakhurst mom tried to remove her eighth-grader from the next round of statewide testing at the Deal School in Deal, Green said officials told her there was no option to refuse. But Green — who worries that corporations that administer standardized tests are shaping questions to fit certain political agendas — refuses to give in.

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"I have a right. I'm the mother, and I live by the Constitution," Green said.

Deal School Superintendent Michael Salvatore said schools are mandated through state and federal rules to test at least 95 percent of their students.

Green is part of a growing movement of parents who say they are fed-up with high-stakes testing and determined to pull their kids out of future assessments.

The movement has been fueled by New Jersey's adoption of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. The new tests — taken on computers instead of traditional pencil and paper — will be administered twice next year to New Jersey students in grades 3 through 12.

Not only are students' futures dependent on the outcomes, but teachers' work evaluations are also tied to the new tests. The scores affect up to 30 percent of the total evaluation for teachers of subjects included in PARCC.

Read:Did Common Core miss the mark?

Some worry that PARCC is fostering an educational culture where instructors are focused only on preparing students for the test.

"Children need to be creative. They need to be able to be innovative," said Bryan Jenner, 51, of Manchester, who teaches music in an elementary school in South Amboy and opposes the new standardized tests. "It appears that it's become high stakes not just for the kids but for the educators."

Proponents of PARCC point to a need for educational reform and increased academic rigor across the country, where students are slipping far behind their international peers.

The United States ranked 27th out of 34 countries in 2012 for mathematics when measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Even America's best performing students — those from Massachusetts — performed two years behind students of the same age in Shanghai, China.

American students' poor performance when compared to their international peers has been cited by politicians and supporters of education reform as justification to increase academic rigor.

But Chris Tienken, a professor of educational leadership and management at Seton Hall University, said the very statistics that paint American students as falling behind are skewed.

"The samples of students who take this test across countries and cities are not comparable," Tienken said.

Schools in other areas of the world, particularly in China, stratify students by ability and wealth, and unnaturally cluster the best and brightest students into prestigious high schools, he said. Lower performing students end up in programs outside of major cities, or the workforce, Tienken said.

Other factors, such as poverty, affect the test scores as well, he said.

"All of these standardized tests are highly susceptible to out of school factors," said Tienken. "I'm not so sure our problem is education as it is the way we treat our children."

Read:NJ task force could scrutinize Common Core, PARCC

Only 72 percent of economically disadvantaged students graduated high school on time in the 2011-2012 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Standardized test scores are closely linked with family income, according to the NCES. The higher the income, the higher the test scores.

"If we're looking for a way of benchmarking student achievement, standardized tests are not it," said Jenner, the music teacher.

Support for reform

Despite the objections, many educators support the PARCC tests. Proponents say rigorous, computer-based testing helps gauge student learning and prepares children for the professional and collegiate challenges ahead.

Toms River Intermediate North students spent a morning last month in the computer lab, completing assignments that will familiarize them with the computers they will later use to take the PARCC.

"Technology is the new utility," said Leonard Niebo, Toms River's supervisor of technology. "We need to be more flexible and move testing to the students in the classroom."

The PARCC test will require students to be able to scroll through multiple tabs, use drop-down menus, and know where to find math symbols on the screen.

Read "KARP: PARCC rule change unfair to high school students"

"There is no job out there that doesn't require people to know this stuff," said Susan Milo, a media specialist at Toms River Intermediate North. "If they don't know technology, they can't do it... We need to get kids on computers every day."

Eighth-grader Stuti Patel, 12, of Toms River said the transition from paper to computer tests comes with its own challenges, like learning to show math work quickly in the digital tests. Yet, Stuti said the pilot PARCC test she took last spring was fairly easy.

Between students, teachers and staff, Toms River Regional Schools have about 21,000 computer users, said Niebo, the technology supervisor.

To prepare for the 2015 PARCC tests, the district bolstered its Internet connections and purchased 2,160 Chrome books at a cost of $715,000, Niebo said. Officials upgraded the district's wireless network at a cost of $250,000, and spent $75,000 to update the memory within the school's existing desktop computers. School officials boosted bandwidth speeds from 90 mbps to 500 mbps, and saved about $12,000 per year by changing Internet providers, he said.

"Bandwidth is like hot water," said Niebo. "You don't know how important it is until you run out."

Pulling out of PARCC

As schools prepare for the first rounds of testing in March, PARCC opponents are gearing up for their own fight. Many are on a mission to keep their children home from school when the testing begins. Last month, a group of about 70 parents and teachers gathered in Stafford to discuss their concerns about the new test and changes to New Jersey's educational standards.

Charisse Kurasz, 46, of Toms River was one of nearly a half dozen parents at the meeting who said they planned to pull their children out of the tests.

"I don't want him being put under this pressure," Kurasz said of her ninth-grade son. "It's teaching him what to think, not how to think."

But schools are not making it easy for parents to opt their children out of the PARCC. Parents say school absentee policies mean keeping their kids home during the long testing schedule endangers their children's ability to move to the next grade.

"The federal government calls for 95 percent of a school's students to be tested, or the school could face consequences that includes creating a corrective action plan," wrote Michael Yaple, spokesman for the state Department of Education, in an email to the Asbury Park Press. "For 14 years, it has been the expectation that students will take part in the statewide assessments...Nothing has changed in the past 14 years."

Schools who receive two consecutive years of corrective action plans face a number of consequences, including losing students to other school districts or charter schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. If a school receives corrective action plans for five straight years, the district must restructure the school.

Schools must administer standardized tests in order to collect financial support under No Child Left Behind, a federal program first established in 2001. The program provides support to schools with disadvantaged children as long as the schools test their students and make some annual yearly progress. To participate, 95 percent of students in the school must be tested.

Salvatore, the superintendent of Deal School as well as Long Branch Public Schools, said 95 percent of each school population and 95 percent of every student subgroup must be tested to avoid a corrective action plan. School administrators offer incentives for children to attend school on testing days, including a tastier breakfast menu and fun afternoon activities, he said. School officials have gone as far as waking students and bringing them to school, he added.

"I think parents should embrace that (testing), to actually see how their child is performing along with their peers statewide," Salvatore said. "If parents are concerned about assessment, they should have a conversation with their child's teacher and their child's principal. I believe that when people see that teaching, learning and assessment are fluid… there shouldn't be an alarm or concern about it."

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The federal program does not require schools to use any particular standardized test, but New Jersey joined a 12-state consortium that uses the PARCC test.

"The new generation of electronic tests are far more advanced than the paper tests they replace," Yaple said. "They will quickly provide feedback that can help teachers improve instruction, and they can provide helpful feedback directly to parents about their child's progress. One of the criticisms of the old tests was the lack of insightful, actionable information to improve instruction. The new PARCC assessments are designed to address that."

But Green, the Oakhurst mother, said she was not giving up. Green and a group of friends are rallying like-minded parents on the Internet, writing to their elected officials, and meeting to plan how to pull their kids out of the coming standardized test.

"They're trying to bully everybody into this," Green said, "(but) my kids will no longer be tested."

Amanda Oglesby: 732-557-5701; aoglesby@app.com

What is PARCC?

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a standardized test aligned with the Common Core State Standards. It is not a federally controlled test; rather, its governing board is comprised of top education officials from participating states.

The Common Core is a set of educational standards New Jersey adopted in 2010 to focus coursework on skills that better prepare students for college and future careers.

The PARCC tests students in math and language arts, and replaces the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) and High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) for children in grades three through 12.