Who likes sitting silently in your seat every day for a week? Who wants to do that 4 times a year?
Well according to the new tests the district rolled out this year, this will become students’ reality for the 2024-2025 school year.
Besides the boredom of testing, students are also worrying about the scores that they won’t receive. According to students interviewed by the Rough Rider, students already spend their entire school year stressing and worrying about their regular test grades. On top of that, these standardized tests just add another load of pressure on students, even though they don’t count for a grade.
“It stresses us out, and it makes me anxious when we don’t get the scores back,” says 6th-grader, Ella Shanker.
Ben Stephanak, another 6th grader, has a similar opinion, saying, “It’s too long and very stressful.”
According to students and teachers at RIS, the amount of time it takes up is a huge disadvantage. NJSLA takes up a whole week, and iReady occurs three times a year, for three days at a time. That’s about two weeks’ worth of extra testing, not including make-up tests, which cause students to miss valuable class lessons.
8th-grader Caitlin Gaeta says, “We are not taking advantage of our learning time and we could use those two weeks for much better use.”
8th-grade math teacher Mr. Gerckens agrees, saying, “These tests are not a productive use of our time when we could be using class time for learning more lessons in the curriculum.”
Many students and teachers agree that standardized tests take away from valuable time we could be using to learn.
According to students, they believe that another negative of standardized testing is that you don’t get any educational knowledge from them. The students taking the tests haven’t learned most of the material on these tests.
A majority of the students at RIS say that the questions they receive, they don’t know. That leads to them having to guess for a lot of them. Also, if they get the question wrong they don’t get to know the right answer.
“More than half of the questions on iReady are things we haven’t been taught so it doesn’t make sense to test us on stuff we don’t know,” says 8th-grader Cooper Stanek. Students feel that these tests are only setting them up for failure.
i-Ready and NJSLA are two very different types of tests. i-Ready testing comes back right away and is used to help teachers see where kids are at and switch them into different classes if needed.
There are many positives of these tests. NJSLA is important for students to take because it helps track students’ progress. i-Ready can be beneficial for learning and it helps students and teachers alike.
8th-grade Language Arts teacher Mr. McMorrow says, “They’re data points which are good things to have and as long as you can get the results back in time to address certain issues, it can be very beneficial to helping students out”
We take i-Ready testing at the beginning, middle, and end of the year, and it shows the teachers if they are helping students learn the material correctly.
Mr. Gechtman agrees with Mr. McMorrow and explains that i-Ready is a great study tool when it’s used correctly. It shows your weaknesses which helps the teachers figure out what to help you with what you’re struggling with.
“Our goal is for every student to reach their full potential,” he said.
Everyone from grades 3-8 that goes to school in New Jersey has to take NJSLA testing. These tests are designed to give schools and teachers more information to improve instruction and to let parents know how their child is doing academically.
According to NJ.gov, “The New Jersey Student Learning Assessments (NJSLA) are statewide assessments that assess students’ progress toward the New Jersey Student Learning Standards in English Language Arts (ELA), mathematics, and science”.
Without these tests, we wouldn’t have as good of an education. These tests show teachers’ trends of what students understood and didn’t the year before, which helps teachers improve their curriculum. A better curriculum helps students have a better understanding of math, language arts, and science.
In conclusion, standardized tests have many advantages and disadvantages, but they’re here to stay and won’t be going away any time soon.