Ohio Legislature has implemented a new test as of this year. The test, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC for short, is being implemented as the new State Test over the old Ohio Achievement Assessment or OAA. There are several reasons the PARCC should be removed and the OAA's be re-implemented.

The first reasons being is the curriculum. As a student, I have seen the decline in my education, from actual learning, reading novels and doing essays, to all practice tests. Even being in all honors there has been a decline. This test actually hurts the public education system, gearing more towards testing than actual education.

The next reason is how the test is made. This test is made to confuse, and stump. It uses strange wording, in order to trick people, such as double negatives, and so on. It is created to fail people. We have even been instructed to not click on manipulative elements too much (things like tables and graphs and going back a page) because it can dock you points. That is completely absurd, considering one of the biggest know strategies is to go back and check passages and graphs.

The next reason the PARCC assessment should be eliminated is about flaws within the very test itself. There are two variations of the test, which is online and paper and pencil. This is a choice up to the district. On the pencil test, you actually have to bubble in every letter. Meaning, that when you have to write and essay (which there are 3 which have to be written throughout the course of all the testing) You would have to bubble in every single letter instead of just writing it like on the OAA's. It is a waste of time considering you are only given 70 minutes to read 2 pieces of text and write and essay.

There are also many flaws in the online test as well. First, it is an incredible challenge to get working. Schools have had many technical issues just days before actual testing takes place. If these issues happen during testing, it could be dangerous to the testing environment and the career of the student. Another issue is that it will lock you out of the test if you change the volume of the computer (we wear headphones because there is a video to watch). Meaning that even if you accidentally hit the volume up button, the test locks you out. You also do not get your progress back. Also, the test can be manipulated easily through the Java console. During a practice test while in the app, my peer and I were able to manipulate the test to allowing us to click out simply by changing one thing from "true" to "false". This is significant because you are then able to look up answers via the computer's browser. Also, the on the non calculator math test, it is simple to let it allow you to use the calculator, by changing a line of code from "true" to "false". These are major flaws that can allow a student to cheat.

This PARCC test is being implemented in several states, other than just Ohio. These tests are poorly designed, and made to fail students. this is not something that the public education system needs. We need real education back. The OAA's were a good standardized test, challenging, yet they did not purposefully attempt to fail students and they did not need to be changed. The excessive testing has taken away REAL education. This PARCC is poorly designed, and needs to be taken out before it really hurts public schools more. Please share this petition with Educators who do not agree with PARCC, your peers and people around you. The public education system needs to be fixed, and PARCC is only hurting it.