Students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary school in Milan, Illinois took the new statewide standardized assessment Friday, April 4, 2014.
It's called the PARCC Field Test and it is replacing the I-SAT, a test that students took to measure their performance and where they were in school.
PARCC stands for The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers; it is supposed to be more in line with the Illinois Common Core standards which lays out what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade.
"We anticipate students having to solve multiple portions of problems as they're going through this assessment," said Kathy Taylor, the Director of Teaching and Learning in the Rock Island/Milan School District.
This is the first year Illinois is introducing the PARCC Field Test to schools, in a few weeks students and administrators will take surveys and evaluate how they thought the test went.
Students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary took the computer based option today, using the school's i-pads for the assessment.
"Our technology department has worked with the state to follow the technology guidelines in trying to see through this first field test; what the best approach is to this computer based assessment," Taylor said.
The new test will be offered to grades K-12 and assesses language arts, literacy, and mathematics.