WOLCOTT — As students prepare for the first round of testing under the state’s new Common Core standards, parents and educators are questioning the tests and why states seem to be in a rush to implement them. On Thursday night, Wolcott school system’s Director of Curriculum Frank Purcaro presented an overview of Common Core, including the accompanying Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests, to parents and members of the public. Students will take the tests in grades 3 through 8 and in the 11th grade. This year, they’re considered pilot tests. In 2014-15, the tests, which are taken on a computer, will become “adaptive,” meaning the questions become progressively more difficult until they reach a student’s ability level. Common Core is intended to help standardize the skills students are expected to learn at certain grade levels, allowing achievement to be measured uniformly across the nation.