All Lincoln juniors underwent a trial round for the new series of standardized tests earlier this week. They were among the first students to ever take the tests, so there were bound to be some bugs. For three days, students had to be patient while the administration was figuring out the logistics of the tests at the same time they were.

The Group A students testing in Room 3 apparently were not able to begin their ELA test on Day 1 until almost halfway through 2nd period, due to difficulties with the system. In the library, where I tested and which was sort of the hub of the operation, things ran more smoothly. This was mostly because the proctors included administrators and the Vice Principal, who were more familiarized with the process prior to testing.

A lot of students were observed skipping quickly through questions without providing any substantial answers, most likely because they wanted to get done with the test sooner, but also because many found it too difficult.

Junior Lion Tales Staff Members Weigh In

Ana Palma— “It was hard. They did have good tools we could use. It seemed really different and they asked different questions than they would on other tests.”

Tyler Lu— “I thought it was stupid. A waste of time. It asked me Pre-calc and Calculus problems, and I’m not in those yet. It was stupid, and it was pretty random. The English was straight-up though. The Drivers Ed thing was kind of annoying because you had to write down a lot. I don’t get why they had to use us as the guinea pigs. They should’ve used the Freshmen.”

Haley Duarte— “I personally really did not like it. I think it was way too technical, and for the English part, I found myself falling asleep for the reading passages. The math was really difficult. I knew not even five questions and there were a lot of things I hadn’t seen before. I hope they don’t make this a permanent test because I feel like they’re setting up students for failure.”

Jamie Vargas— “I thought it was a waste of time and it really hurt my eyes. The way they formatted the scheduling– that was really dumb.”

Bahaar Muhar— “I actually like the concept of Common Core; it really does benefit us, for example, if many people are failing a certain portion of math, the school will know what to work on. However, I believe that Common Core testing this year was disorganized, at the wrong time and for the wrong grade level – Juniors are way too busy with AP and Honors classes that they should not have had to miss any class, moreover Sophomores would have been better “guinea pigs” for this test in my opinion. Honestly, it was so disorganized and I hated missing my classes for 3 days; because it is the end of the grading period and teachers are throwing tests at us, but I can not do the best of my ability because I missed so much of this content.”

Priscilla Hernandez— “I thought that it was unnecessary because it was harder than stuff we learn in school. The fact that it was on a computer made it even harder.”

The Test Itself

Were the tests a success or a failure? Well, one thing is for sure: they are definitely more of a challenge than most standardized tests, such as the CAHSEE, PSAT, and even CSTs. The general student response was firmly on the negative side as well.

The secure browser seemed successful, and the online tools were fairly simple to figure out. However, many ELA questions required the highlighting of multiple sentences in a passage, and the composition of alternate introductions or conclusions. The same objectives could be accomplished just as well through a standard multiple choice test.

I’m weary of how exactly all these test responses will be objectively evaluated. With so many students in California slated to take these tests in future years, it seems like there is no way graders can give each students’ answers the time and attention they deserve.