Parkland Parents Upset With New Math Testing Method

A concerned mother of two Cetronia Elementary School pupils told Parkland School directors that the district’s new method of administering math tests is leaving parents of struggling kids in the dark about what they can do to help at home.

At issue are new tests that require children in third through fifth grades to answer questions online via computer—even if they need to transfer the answers from paper.

But the test papers being returned to pupils are not what parents might remember seeing when they were in school. There are no exam questions or answers marked with a teacher’s red pen to show where mistakes were made—just a grade.

That has left parents frustrated, said Jennifer Reed, who is not just a parent of two children at Cetronia, but a third grade teacher at Fogelsville Elementary School.

“The problems with this testing format are many,” Reed said. Perhaps most importantly, pupils and parents are not getting to see which questions had incorrect answers.

Reed also questioned whether some 8-, 9-, or 10-year-old children might have problems transferring answers from paper to a computer screen.

District officials acknowledged that the new testing format has created problems and said they are working on fixing them.

“Could the rollout have been a little bit better? Absolutely,” said Superintendent Richard T. Sniscak. “I’m not going to make excuses. We make corrections.”

The new testing format is not being done on a whim, district officials said. Online testing is a new standard being handed down by the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Part of the idea is to help provide educators with analytical information about student weaknesses and then to assign instruction accordingly, Sniscak said.

Nonetheless, the district is responding to complaints and working to provide them with more information about how their children are performing on the exams—including providing paper copies of exams when requested, said Kelly Rosario, the district’s director of curriculum instruction and professional development.

The district is also planning to have some parent forums in November and December to discuss the new testing format, Rosario said.