Anyone else's kid taking the PARCC this spring? Tips for prep?

by Jessica L. 19 views3 replies
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Jessica L.OP
May 27, 2026

My daughter is in 7th grade and her school just sent home a notice about PARCC testing coming up in a few weeks. We moved here from Illinois last year so she did the IAR practice tests there, and before that we were in Massachusetts doing MCAS practice test prep — so honestly I'm a little overwhelmed trying to figure out what's different about PARCC and what actually transfers over.

She's pretty solid in ELA but math is where we're nervous. I found some PARCC Mathematics Practice Questions online and had her work through a section last night — she said the format felt familiar but some of the multi-part questions tripped her up. We're trying to carve out maybe 20-30 minutes a night for the next three weeks doing practice tests and statewide test practice materials.

Has anyone been through this with a middle schooler? What actually helped — timed practice, content review, or just drilling the question formats? Would love to hear from parents who've done this before, especially if your kid struggled with the math section.

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Tom W.
May 28, 2026
Coming from the IAR practice tests side too (we're in Illinois but my sister's kids are in NJ). The math reasoning style is similar across a lot of these state assessments. One thing that helped my niece: she'd do a practice section, then go back and read every wrong answer explanation out loud. Sounds tedious but her scores jumped like 15-20 points over two weeks. Also the PARCC usage practice questions are worth doing even for kids who are strong readers — the grammar conventions section catches a lot of kids off guard.
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Alex G.
May 28, 2026
We went through this last year with my son. Honestly the biggest thing was getting him comfortable with the computer-based format — he kept second-guessing himself on the drag-and-drop questions. We used njsla practice test materials since New Jersey switched names but the content overlaps a lot. Doing timed sections made a huge difference. Don't skip the constructed response questions even if they seem hard — they're worth a lot.
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Sarah M.
May 28, 2026
Three weeks is plenty of time! My rule of thumb: 20 focused minutes beats 90 distracted minutes every single day. Keep sessions short, celebrate small wins, and make sure she's sleeping well the week before. Test anxiety tanks scores more than content gaps for most middle schoolers.

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