From October 27 to November 3, South Brunswick High School students will participate in the New Jersey Student Learning and New Jersey Graduation Proficiency tests. The tests do not count towards graduation and are field tests which assess the level that students are at in high school. The upcoming NJSLA-A and NJGPA-A tests are field tests, which means that they are experimental tests that the developers administer before releasing an actual assessment.
Students participate so that developers can gather data about the type of questions they should add on the actual assessment, and only the developers get a score report on how students performed. The testing is necessary because the two assessments are switching to an adaptive format. In adaptive tests, the questions adjust to each student’s level and add new questions with difficulty that depends on the previous answers. The real tests will be administered in the spring, the NJGPA a graduation requirement for juniors.
The difficult task of scheduling for these exams falls to Mr. Jeffrey Rumen, Assistant Principal of Academic Leadership. These schedules are not easy to make, though. There are long hours that go into accommodating everyone’s needs and time constraints. “We have to take into account our facilities, spaces, and where the students are going to be testing?” All of these issues have to be addressed before creating a schedule like this, especially since so many students and teachers are involved. While planning for a round of testing typically takes months, Rumen only had a few weeks to plan for these field tests.
In the past, the testing schedules created to allot for these tests give some blocks more class time than others, since the tests typically take place in the morning to avoid the complication of lunches. Usually, the first and second blocks are reserved for testing. This disrupts the class time for students who aren’t testing since a lot of classes have students across multiple grades. It also makes it difficult for teachers to keep their classes at the same pace.
So Mr. Rumen decided to try something different this year. “And I said, well, what if I threw out the rules about our schedules and our day?”
This year, testing will not come as a disruption to class time. Mr. Rumen has adjusted the testing schedule to allow for the most class time for students who are testing and students who aren’t. The schedule takes place over 7 days, where each alternate day has a reverse block schedule. That is, on alternate days, instead of moving from block 1 to 2 and so on throughout the day, students will move from block 4 in the morning to block 1 at the end of the day. This schedule allows each class to have an equal amount of time even with the disruption of testing, because block 3 and block 4 will have full blocks one day, and blocks 1 and 2 will have full blocks the next day. To not confuse the A-day and B-day schedule, there are two A-days in a row (October 27 and 28) followed by two B-days (October 29 and 30) and then 2 A-days (October 31 and November 3). The final day, November 4, will be a B day, which will put everybody back on the normal calendar.
When asked about the inspiration behind the creation of this schedule, Mr. Rumen talked about a quote from the owner of the Savannah Bananas. “What are the rules that everybody doesn’t like? And we’re going to just get rid of them and we’re going to replace it with something that fans do like to make a better experience.”
Even though the tests might seem tedious and pointless to some, they also hold benefits for students, especially underclassmen. Mr. Rumen adds, “The NJSLA is really important for you guys because it tells us your progress and gives us some data as to where you’re at.” Furthermore, students get their first exposure to standardized testing, which will be helpful for the tests that they have to take later for graduation requirements and college applications. For the school, this field test is important too. There is a new application that the tests are being administered on, and the staff has to work to download this application on chromebooks in time for testing. so they get to make sure that their Chromebooks and networks work with the new system.
