A teacher in a middle school once told me — with a straight face — that my son was “overly confident” regarding test-taking. I’d never heard that particular complaint before. I laughed.

The teacher, who thankfully has retired, was not amused. Students ought to reread questions on tests, review answers, and not tackle exams as a race to the finish line, she lectured.

My kid rushed to get it done. But his confidence about the outcome was premature, and as an average student, unwarranted, the teacher explained.

In other words, it was him, not the nonstop testing, who was the problem. He was too sure of himself.

Not anymore. Not by a long shot. This week, there was plenty of doubt, second-guessing, and high-anxiety to go around for both students and teachers in Ohio schools.

This week Ohio began widespread testing aligned with the Common Core academic standards throughout the state’s school districts. These new stress-inducers inflicted on children are known as the PARCC tests.

Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Career can be added to the insane list of academic acronyms. The PARCC testing consortium developed its exams to be taken in two parts: performance-based assessment, which is heavy on analyzing and synthesizing information through written essays, and end-of-course exam, which is taken later to gauge learning through selected responses.

The tests target each student between third and ninth grade, including my once “overly confident” test taker. He and other freaked-out freshman have been practicing for the online testing transition with sample questions and computer instruction.

Not every school district in Ohio is electronically equipped for the test yet. But all districts are administering it with high tech or paper and pencil or a combination hybrid. It’s a brave new world of state-mandated tests with new multistate expectations of what students should know to be ready for college and career.

What could possibly go wrong? Ask Ohio students who took PARCC tests. Ask the submissive guinea pigs who have grown up in a testing culture that inundates them with yardsticks impeding instruction.

Ask students about their collective apprehensive before high-stakes testing, about the tension that makes kids physically sick with worry. Their school year revolves around testing and performance.

Districts hold raucous assemblies to rally students before the really big tests. There are upbeat speeches and cheering, just like a sports assembly before a big game.

It is a strange spectacle. Ask teachers. Common Core has them struggling to teach in a way that hasn’t been taught to meet the challenge of new tests under impossible deadlines.

Suddenly, students, including my freshman, who have spent years habitually learning to regurgitate facts to pass tests, are being asked to think critically. They don’t even know what that means.

They don’t get the question. Rote memorization is all they know. The switch to higher-level thinking and more rigorous lesson plans in line with Common Core standards won’t be easy or happen overnight.

But it can and should be done. The goals of learning to dissect complex material, to explain, interpret, and apply information, are laudable.

Yet it’s a huge change in educational approach and very much a foreign concept to many students who are tested on their depth of understanding. Ask administrators about the PARCC tests Ohio students are taking — seemingly developed on the fly.

Ask district officials about executing first-time computerized testing and concerns over technical glitches, slow computers, or student errors because of missed online directions. Ask state education officials who try to reduce district testing time, ensure that exams reflect curriculum, and ultimately replace high-stress learning with the love of learning.

Ask lawmakers, who are hastily working on ways to minimize ramifications for students who will predictably fail the initial testing experiment. Ask skeptics who wonder how the new PARCC assessments will be scored and by whom, considering the significant amount of student writing to be assessed.

Ask parents who see a train wreck coming and don’t want their kids harmed. They question how developmentally appropriate it is for students to stare at computer screens for hours over successive days for strenuous testing to evaluate newly introduced cognitive skills.

Some threaten to opt out. The testing is going on with or without their student.

But rest assured, nobody, least of all the test-takers, is overly confident of anything.

Contact Blade columnist Marilou Johanek at: mjohanek@theblade.com

First Published February 21, 2015, 5:00 a.m.