When all sophomores missed a full day of classes this week, it wasn’t yet another snow day; it was the PARCC assessments.

All English 10 students took pilot PARCC tests, with half of sophomores testing Wednesday and the other half testing Friday. Administrative aspects of the tests went smoothly, but sophomores said some students refused to take the test seriously.

The PARCC Performance-Based Assessments are scheduled to replace the English and algebra High School Assessments as a graduation requirement during the 2016-17 school year. PARCC tests were taken on chromebooks and consist of both multiple choice and essay questions. Issues with the chromebooks were minimal, testing coordinator Kathy McHale said.

Students spent the full day testing in the auditorium, completing three testing sessions of 90, 75 and 60 minutes.

“The main reason I wanted to do a big group is so that teachers wouldn’t have to proctor the tests in their classrooms and then miss a whole week of classes,” McHale said.

Even though most students were present, not everyone saw value in taking the practice tests seriously.

“Everyone in my section, there were like 30 of us, just wrote five words for all the essays and put random answers for the multiple choice,” sophomore Ari Gutman said.

Other sophomores put effort into the test, even if students didn’t need the entire session to complete it.

“I would’ve been bored with nothing to do otherwise,” sophomore Mary Dimitrov said. “Some kids finished in five minutes and joked around the rest of the time—playing music out loud, throwing paper and talking.”

Administrators acknowledged that the time allotted was more than most students needed.

“You might have 75 test and a majority of kids are done in 20 or 30 minutes,” McHale said. “They try to build in extra time for each session but it makes it difficult when you test in a big session like this.”

Gutman said he found the format of the writing portion of the test odd because it was a different length for everyone, while Dimitrov said it was comparable to the English county formative. Overall, however, McHale said she sees the practice tests as a success.

“They showed up and the majority of them took it relatively seriously,” she said. “It went much better than I expected.”