As Common Core Looms, Schools Up Tech Game

Donna Carlson was a nervous wreck before her Clinton Avenue School fourth-graders took the Common Core field test last year. She worried not that her students would fail at using the necessary online tools for the test — but that she would.

With another Common Core test coming up again on May 4, Carlson (pictured above) has upped her tech game. She feels at ease showing her students how to go through the practice tests they have taken regularly through the year.

She made sure to be ready this time.

Clinton Avenue and other district schools are now making sure their students haven’t forgotten the skills they honed — focusing on drilling technological familiarity more than academic test prep.

Connecticut is one of 45 states that have agreed to adopt the Common Core, national academic standards that set benchmarks in English and math for students from K to 12 — aligned to the standardized Smart Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test. The Achievement First (AF) charter network and New Haven Public School district decided to switch to the controversial high-stakes Common Core two years before the state requirement of 2015.

New Haven students took a practice test last year to get the hang of it all. This year’s test results will count.

In preparation, schools like Clinton Avenue have focused as much on technology as the material on the test itself.

Keyboarding Lessons

Clinton Avenue Principal Ana Rodriguez said the existing curriculum will prepare students for the content, so there is no need for extra test prep sessions. Administrators and staff spend months making sure students’ individual needs are met for how the SBAC is administered. Each group of students sits for five different testing sessions over the course of five weeks — three English and Language Arts sessions and two math sessions.

About 400 Clinton Avenue students will sit for the SBAC. The school has six laptop carts, each with 30 Intel laptops, as well as a library filled with 30 desktops. Teachers roll the laptop carts into their classrooms when they want to practice.

The school caters to Spanish-speaking students, immigrants and students of immigrants, who might need extra help along with the special education students. Special education teacher Brittany Ducran (pictured) said some of her students may need parts of the reading sections read aloud to them. Others just may need more time.

Kids are expected to sign up for a certain number of ​“typing classes” to practice their ​“keyboarding skills” each week, depending on the teacher, Rodriguez said. She said she wants to make sure students are not losing points or being slowed down simply because they are not familiar with the program; the SBAC should be testing pure academic learning, especially during the ​“baseline year.”

At the beginning of the year, another special education teacher said a fourth-grader was confused when he looked at the online calculator’s buttons, because he had memorized the order of the buttons on his standard calculator, which were different, Ducran said.

“Thankfully, he noticed it,” she said.

“Kids are creatures of habit. The more comfortable they get, the better,” Ducran said.

Virtual Toolbox

Fourth-grader Dylan Pellot (pictured above at left) loves using the school’s laptop computers for writing assignments and practice tests. He eagerly went through a list of the different tools he uses for the SBAC — the ​“notepad” tool allows kids to write and save reference text they don’t want to submit; the ​“highlighter” lets them come back to confusing reading passages; the ​“calculator” can be accessed with the click of a button.

And he knows how to change the size of the words: ​“If you’re blind, you could make it bigger.”

He said his older brother taught him how to use a computer; at home, he has access to a laptop ​“much bigger” than Clinton Avenue’s laptops. But the school keeps practicing with students ​“because a lot of us forget stuff,” he said.

As a third-grader last year, Pellot was in the youngest grade to take the practice SBAC. But even then, he wasn’t nervous.

Unlike his teacher.

“I didn’t even know how to use a laptop last year,” Carlson said, with a laugh. ​“I went home and practiced 100 times before I taught” the students. It’s not difficult to use the online tools, but it takes practice. ​“They have to be able to click on a protractor, drag it to an angle, sit it on the vertex” and measure the degrees, she explained.

Her class is scheduled to take English tests May 4 through 6, and then math tests May 28 and 29. Each test session takes about two and a half hours, though there is no designated time limit.

Pellot said he tried and thinks he can even access the test on his smartphone. ​“But we can’t use our phones here.”