With COVID normalized and schools going back to business as usual, one thing that has returned with everything else is state testing. Students at John W. North high school are enduring two weeks of treacherous testing.
According to the website, students in 11th grade have to complete three tests in Literature, Math, and Science (Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction). During the two weeks of testing, all students’ classes have been changed to three periods a day, each being 2 hours long. The classes rotate daily, Monday being first, third, and fifth period, while the following day being second, fourth, and sixth period and goes on for Thursday and Friday, with Wednesday a normal reduced day.
Students have been feeling the duration of each class since people who finish faster can’t use their phones and end up being bored. Still, others who need the time feel the drag of a long test. “I’m kinda [in]different to it, it makes sense why we have to do it, obviously so the board of education knows we’re still progressing and still doing what we’re supposed to be doing in school, obviously I don’t like it though, right? I’m sitting there for two hours taking a test and can’t do anything, but it makes sense why we have to do it. I don’t think we need two hours every period, I don’t think there is a necessity in it being that long, it would probably be better to have an hour-long class period.” said John W. North Junior, Isidro Alviar.
The State Testing has been draining students who have to wake up in the morning and then take a test. “It felt like a huge waste of time, mostly, nothing goes towards our grades so it felt like we were missing two weeks of work I could’ve been doing otherwise. I was bored, I finished the tests fairly early and had to spend the rest of the class doing nothing.” reasoned John W North Junior Joshua Lucas.
Many students were feeling like the test was pointless and boring since the majority of the class would either finish quickly and be left with nothing to do or take a while to finish and be burnt out by the hours-long brain-busting work.