Hadley Middle School will have new laptop computers this month to help handle the final round of the state’s new online standardized test.
The Homer School District 33C board agreed this week to purchase 150 computers for up to $40,000. Last year, the district allocated $118,000 to buy 450 Google-supported Acer Chromebooks for fourth graders and seventh-grade language arts classes.
“That was part of our plan to help with PARCC testing,” District 33C Supt. Kara Coglianese said. “We have another round of testing coming up in April, and these additional Chromebooks are needed to help.”
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PARCC, short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, is the two-part standardized test that Illinois adopted this year in conjunction with new Common Core curriculum standards. The “performance-based” round of tests began March 9, and end-of-year assessments start April 27.
“With PARCC testing, they really just found that they needed more computer power in our middle school building, with 900 students,” board president Angela Adolf said. “The money was there.”
The computer purchase is considered an advance of a summer purchase planned for next school year. The Chromebooks boot up quickly, feature wear-resistant cases and, at about $250 apiece, cost roughly half the price of a traditional laptop because they primarily rely on cloud-based applications rather than pricey software.
Hadley, which has fifth and sixth grades, has 60 Chromebooks so adding 150 more will ease PARCC scheduling, district officials said. Students in grades three through eight take the test.
Also Tuesday night, the school board voted to boost administrators’ pay by an average of 1.75 percent for the 2015-16 school year. Adolf said there was little variance in the size of the raises.
Patrick Guinane is a freelance reporter.