Lately, students and staff have noticed the excessive amount of state tests that students are taking this school year. While testing has been a part of the graduation requirements each school year, this year has seen an uptick in state testing from the iReady Universal Screener to the NJPGA and NJSLA. With the abundance of tests mandated by the state, many are wondering where students stand to benefit from all of these tests in an already busy school year? 

Any test proponent would tell you that these tests are helpful to the school to see where each student is at skill-wise, but lately, tests like the NJGPA Adaptive Field Test which students took in early November, didn’t give the school the same advantage of assessing students’ strengths and weaknesses. Students and staff alike are expressing frustration with this inundation of tests. 

“This year has definitely felt like an overload,” District Testing Coordinator and Supervisor of Humanities Ms. Jamie Cawley said. “Standardized tests are never anyone’s favorite part of school, but some of them truly are necessary.” 

Ms. Cawley went on to say that the addition of the NJSLA-Adaptive and NJGPA-Adaptive field tests have created more testing disruptions in the middle of the school day this year than ever before. 

“While some assessments do help us understand students’ strengths and needs, the volume this year has gone far beyond what’s productive,” said Ms. Cawley. 

Students wondered what the purpose was for the adaptive field tests in early November if they didn’t count towards any graduation requirements. It turns out that their purpose was to collect information for the state to design tests that the students will eventually take. Unfortunately, these tests coincide with i-Ready and the PSAT as well. 

Its no secret that testing is no one’s favorite school activity, whether you are a student or staff member. The reality is that these tests usually disturb learning and make students miss class. This makes teachers re-arrange their lessons and it affects their classes’ learning schedules and the time spent on particular units. 

“The field tests in particular disrupted instructional time, created schedule shifts, and put additional pressure on teachers to rearrange lessons and assessments,” said Ms. Cawley. “The feedback has been consistent: the volume is simply too high this year, and the benefit of certain tests (especially field tests) does not match the burden they place on everyone.” 

Clearly even staff members have their frustrations about some of these tests. Many teachers around LRHS have described the most recent field test as unnecessary since the state of New Jersey isn’t even giving any of these scores to the school for them to use and overview. 

Even though many recent tests can be viewed as unnecessary and a waste of time, some of them are truly needed for the state and school to use. It is useful to the state and school because it allows the state to see where each student matches up on a broader scale. It’s important for the school to see where each student is at academically for their own benefit and for planning and instruction.

Sophomore Zara Perez said, “The amount of tests being given to us this year is unusual as there has never been this many state tests before. I was really confused when we had to test the other week.” Perez continued to say that she thinks some of these tests given by the state weren’t needed and just gave students a burden and made them miss class time right before a big break.

Perez also heard many complaints around school while these tests were taking place. 

“I heard a lot of complaints during this test from students and staff, [with] many saying that it was stupid [or] why we are taking these tests and many [were] just complaining saying they wanted to go home.” 

She also mentioned that the state gave them too much time to complete the tests as many students rushed through it and had a lot of free time after finishing each section.

Another LRHS teacher said that even the information that the state shares with the school isn’t useful. Science teacher Ms. Brenda Ferguson said, “I think students are over-tested. I do not think the information is useful for planning purposes. Data often comes in too late to be useful. To affect planning, time would need to be set aside during the summer or early in the school year for teachers to make meaningful changes to what and how they are teaching material.” 

Ms. Ferguson also stated that test scores may not be that accurate most of the time. 

“If you give them several hours of high-stake testing for several days, test fatigue can easily set in. And of course there are students who don’t take the test seriously,” she said. 

Ms. Ferguson also believes that state testing takes a toll on students adding to their already stressful and hectic lives as students. It also interferes with teaching time about the very information that students are being tested on which can add extra work and stress for teachers when it comes to planning their lessons around the testing schedule.

Overall, everyone around LRHS feels the toll that testing has taken on the students and staff alike. This is not to say that all tests that students take are bad since a lot of the information can be used to help the students out in the future, but at the same time, by then will it be too late to use that information for the benefit of current students?