CAASPP is a test that we’re all familiar with either because of the ghastly sound that we all must listen to, or 2 to 3 weeks of a messed-up school schedule. It is safe to say that students and teachers alike have grown to hate this test, no matter how much they tell you that “it’s an important assessment that lets the state know if students are learning.”
This month of April has been turned on its head and inside out with the new testing schedule. I want to go over every single issue this unwise schedule has had for me and my fellow alumni.
For starters, we are being taken out of our classes to take a test all day. For some this isn’t a big deal, but for AP students this is destroying their learning. It is absurd that someone in administration sat down and decided to go through with this harrowing schedule. With the month of May with AP testing about to obliterate every AP student, this schedule just killed all the time set aside for review and mock exams. Teachers had been scrambling to get their students ready even before this schedule was set, and now there is very little hope to fully review the material covered through the year. As I am writing this it is 19 days to the first AP test, and truthfully, we are not prepared at all now- everything that we must know for test day seems unfathomable. Teachers are struggling to push review to everyone and its not helping that half the class is missing doing taking the CAASPP test. Its laughable that Administration saw this schedule as a productive, but its not funny that half of AP students will be ill- prepared to take their AP tests for which the most part is paid by the school. Additionally, classwork has become more homework and keeping up has wasted much needed review time. As it stands, this new schedule has failed the alumni alongside the teachers.
Secondly, there is no instance where anyone benefits from this testing schedule. We are truly baffled at the toll it is taking on English classes, for English is testing both Math and Science. Administration just took 2 weeks out of our much-needed review. Honestly, we have been tempted to just skip testing because the review is much more important to me than an insipid test. We won’t ever benefit from this test. Hope was that they would try to make it work for everyone and not make it a pain.
Lastly, the MPR is a pathetic solution for the students who have completed their test. Block schedule was a challenge, but everyone was in the same class and the teacher could monitor everyone and make sure the important steps were taken to be ready for review and prepare for a final project, exam, or an Ap Test. We would have never thought that we would miss block schedule, but this schedule made rivals the Pandemic online learning. To refresh your memory, during the pandemic nobody knew what was going on and there was no learning to be done during those horrible months.
Now, it seems that teachers and students have united in their disdain for this year’s schedule for CAASPP Testing. Teachers are consistently expressing that “we are behind a day” or that “I don’t know what to do anymore”. There is no other sight like it as you watch your teachers day in, and day out break their backs to cover their curriculum just to have the rug being pulled from under them by this testing schedule as they scramble to keep up for the sake of their students that are left behind or are falling behind. We know who we must blame for the poor performance on the AP tests this year and those are definitely not the teachers.
About the Contributor
Merdardo Saravia Zelaya, Staff Writer
Medardo is someone who never knows what is going on due to sleeping for about 11 hours per week. It’s not all bad, Medardo’s favorite show is Infinity Train, with his favorite season being the very first one. He is a strange person keeping busy with school and the desire to be good at writing.