BELFAST — Students here in third- through eighth-grades started a week of state-mandated assessments on Monday. The new test, made by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, replaces the fall New England Common Assessment Program exam and is meant to measure how well students are faring under the Common Core standards adopted by the state in 2011, and put in place in the 2013-14 school year.

Unlike past years, the tests are being given on computers. Schools have set aside extra time to get familiar with the new system and the incursion into regular class time, along with unknowns of the new test have touched nerves among those leery of online education, standardized tests or both, with some parents seeking to opt their students out of the assessments.

But what is it?

I spent two hours at Troy Howard Middle School recently with students who were doing practice versions of the test's major components: math and English language arts/literacy. A login system designed to discourage cheating meant I couldn’t take the practice tests myself. But students let me read questions over their shoulders, and to the extent that I could without getting in their way, I tried to answer them on my own.

What I saw surprised me. But not in the way I'd expected.

Smarter Balanced was touted by Maine's likeable former education commissioner, Stephen Bowen, who described the system in terms suggesting not only an antidote to fusty, outmoded “bubble sheet” tests, but a product superior to all the other computer-based products that didn't make the cut.

The name, despite being composed of two adjectives, came across as scientific but approachable. Like the butter substitute with a similar name, it suggested a swapping out of heart-clogging bureaucracy for magic stuff like higher order thinking, or flax seeds. All at no cost to taste. Which is why I pictured the Smarter Balanced test as a kind of healthy margarine, but with more bells and whistles, starting with a slick user interface, maybe.

The engineering under the hood of the SBACs may be superior to the old bubble sheet NECAP tests they replace — according to Maine Acting Education Commissioner Tom Desjardin in a recent memo, the Smarter Balanced test measures "higher-order thinking and how students actually apply the skills they should be learning" to succeed in college and careers in the 21st century; it uses "universal tools" (think airport signage), has "adaptive abilities" that can alter the course of the test midstream based on the test-taker's previous answers; and can convert highlighted text to speech to help students with disabilities and "alleviate test-taking anxiety." But for all the splash about computer-based tests, what the students were looking at on the screens of their MacBook Airs could have been coded 15 years ago.

Leaving aside some unseen-but-brilliant twists in what computer programmers call the "plumbing," the tests might as well have been written on paper.

Seventh-graders in Dennis Nardone's class spent their normal hour-long period working through a practice session for the math portion of the test. It was meant to resemble an actual test, though none of the exact questions would appear in the real deal.

Much of the class was about procedure. Students logged in with a combination of their own school ID and a test-specific code, then worked through a half dozen problems on proportions. Each student got a sheet of paper and pencil to make longer calculations or otherwise map out the problem before clicking on a multiple choice selection or typing a number into a blank text field.

The vibe in the room was like a dress rehearsal. Periods of quiet work were casually paused and resumed as issues came up.

"What are your chances of getting it right if you guess?" a student aide asked aloud. It was an impromptu lesson on probability. "Zero point zero zero zero ..." one student said, beginning to recite the numerical equivalent of "impossible." The aide headed him off before another student gave the right answer: One-in-four, or 25-percent.

"You'd get 25-percent on the test if you never looked at any of the questions," the aide said.

His charge took his advice. A few minutes later the boy stretched back in his seat.

There were technical minor hangups. Nardone said he was glad for the dry run, then put the same question to the class.

“Has it made you feel more comfortable?”

There was a unanimous “No.”

“But at least you know where the buttons are and where to log on,” Nardone said. The comment drew a few murmurs of assent.

Midway through the period, Nardone stopped the class and went back to the beginning of the practice test, projecting the test questions on a screen at the front of the classroom and reviewing each question, prompting students to use strategies they'd learned in the last few months and acknowledging when a question was about a concept they hadn't studied yet.

More than anything, he asked them to be vigilant about playing by the rules of each question.

Here was one:

- Katie buys a necklace for $14.50 plus 6 percent tax. Sharon buys a bracelet for $12 plus 6 percent tax. Enter the sum, in dollars, that Katie and Sharon paid.

Nardone broke it down, reviewing how to calculate a percentage from the sum of the two prices. At the end, he reminded them to include a dollar sign. A question like this might be worth two points, he said. Giving a correct answer in the wrong form could cost one. Conversely, a little focus could pay off.

"Every question you get right could be that one that puts you over the top," he said.

To a certain extent, he was guessing about this.

Students pointed out that the on-screen keypad for this problem didn't include the "$" symbol. On other questions, the keypad swelled to include more characters. To Nardone's point, it was probably best to stay attentive, though it was unclear whether an answer that was mostly right would be received in the spirit of the Common Core as partially meeting the standard or would just be wrong.

On the jewelry question, I made a minor misstep. My answer — a correctly-computed tax that I'd forgotten to add to the sticker prices of the jewelry — might have appeared among incorrect choices of a multiple choice question, which this was not.

Another sample math question:

The amount charged by a taxi cab company is directly proportional to the number of miles travel. This equation represents the proportional relationship between the amount charged (c), in dollars, and the number of miles (m) traveled.

5c = 4m

Enter the amount, in dollars, that the taxicab company charges for each mile traveled.

Across the hall in Sue Warren's eighth-grade language arts class, a group of students worked on a practice version of the English Language Arts/Literacy portion of the SBAC. Here, the test looked more like an independent study session. Students wore earbuds for listening to dictated passages of text. The test was composed of written passages followed by a dozen or more questions.

A passage about brothers at an amusement park was followed by 16 multiple choice questions, including:

Which sentence indicates Fred is nervous about riding the Ferris Wheel?

"The Ferris Wheel was drawing him like a magnet." What effect does the author create by using the phrase "drawing him like a magnet?"

And this final question, requiring a written answer:

What conclusion can be drawn about David and his family? Support your answers with details from the text?

Warren offered students similar tips to Nardone on the game theory of test-taking. A question might ask which answer best describes an idea, she said, putting emphasis on the word “best,” meaning there could be some decoys among the choices.

Owen Sterrs, a substitute teacher sitting in on the practice session to observe, took an optimistic view of the test.

Six years ago, he had been in this very school taking the paper and pencil test, then known as the MEA. By comparison, Sterrs said, the Smarter Balanced looked much more engaging and flexible because of the interactive features and the combination of visual, auditory and text elements.

"Just the fact that it's on a computer is a huge step in the right direction," he said.

A student named Harrison finished early and Sterrs asked him if he felt more or less pressure on this test than on the MEA.

"Less," Merchant said, adding that he was really hoping that he did well.

Like Sterrs, Warren said the switch to computers has been a positive change.

"The kids are used to being on their computers," she said. "It's natural to them after several years."

The state’s standardized tests are typically high-stakes affairs that come with penalties for schools with low scores or poor participation rates. However, this year won’t count. The switch to an untested computer-based system, based on a different educational philosophy, is different enough that 2015 will be about working out the kinks and setting a baseline.

“This being the first year of the test, we're telling them to do their best,” Warren said.

Contact Ethan Andrews at: news@penbaypilot.com