The Wareham School Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to have preliminary placement of testing for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers program for both the ninth and eleventh-grades for next school year.

Similarly to MCAS, PARCC testing is meant to show whether students in grades K-12 are on track to be prepared for college and their careers, though one of PARCC's goals is to set up a nationwide standard for testing.

MCAS is strictly a Massachusetts-based test that students must pass in order to graduate high school, while also measuring students' competency at different grade levels leading up to high school.

MCAS is set up to align with Massachusetts Curriculum Framework, while PARCC goes along with Common Core State Standards, which also aims to set up a nationwide framework that makes each state's standards the same or similar while also working with teachers and parents to make sure students are prepared to move onto the next level of education from grades K-12.

In Wareham, grades three through eight will continue with MCAS testing for next year, with a final vote to solidify the testing for the high school to take place in October.

With a June 30 deadline looming to have preliminary testing in place, Janice Rotella, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, gave a presentation of the different avenues for choosing between PARCC, MCAS, or a combination of both.

Only in high school can there be a mix of the two tests. In elementary, it’s either all PARCC or all MCAS.

According to Rotella, MCAS will continue to be the competency determination for state high school graduates through the Class of 2018. The school district had another trial run of PARCC this spring.

Massachusetts decided earlier this year to join at least 14 other states in an experiment with a preliminary phase of PARCC testing. The phase is expected to last at least through the 2015 school year, though it isn't expected to take over for MCAS testing at least until 2018.

Recommendations from Wareham High School are that PARCC testing be administered at the high school, while tenth-grade students would still take the MCAS competency determination in English language arts, mathematics, and science and engineering. PARCC focuses on English-language arts and mathematics.

Student representative Nicole Russo, who has taken the PARCC test, said that it was much more difficult than the MCAS, saying that her entire education has been built around taking MCAS tests.

“I felt I didn’t do half as well on the (PARCC) field test than I did on the MCAS,” said Russo.

PARCC leans more toward “college-level work,” according to Rotella.

“The questions are more in-depth and (the test) deals with real world problems,” she said.

Rotella also said work has begun with teachers so they can experience the rigors of the test themselves.

Russo noted if the younger students stay with MCAS testing and then hit high school and test with PARCC, the difference could be huge and challenging.

School Committee member Melvin Lazarus said the tests are getting “ridiculous” and questioned whether or not this was something the committee wanted to do.

“We want to be ahead of the academic curve,” said Wareham High School Principal Scott Palladino of the PARCC testing.

“The sooner we can expose students to colleges and employers, the better they will be,” said School Committee member Geoff Swett in relation to the technology aspect of the tests. “We must align our instruction and curriculum in being successful. If we don’t, shame on us.”

Chairman Clifford Sylvia also voiced his displeasure with the current state of testing within schools.

“It seems all we’re doing now is testing. It’s like Test-Mania. We are absolutely clobbering our kids with tests,” said Sylvia.

“It’s a prescription to fail,” he later added, noting that the schools will have difficulty to compete time-wise and financially to educate the students. “We don’t have the capacity to give our kids every break they need.”

Though Sylvia did not like the idea of more testing for students, he supported Superintendent Shaver-Hood’s recommendations for testing next year, noting they needed a ruling on the matter for that night.

Shaver said the proposal give grades three through eight more time to prepare for the move to PARCC, stating this is not a final vote. “It’s just a placement to see what we are doing.”