On Tuesday, March 19th, at 7:30AM, approximately 250 Juniors shuffled into their assigned computer labs for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test, or the SBAC test (also referred to as the SBA). However, upon signing into their accounts, the students noticed that the tests were not available. After several minutes of deliberation among the staff and administrators, students were told that they could not take the test that morning, and were instructed to do homework for the remaining four hours of the testing period.

The administrators then discovered that Wilcox was not within the required testing window on Tuesday. “Schools are permitted to design their individual site schedules, as long as they are within the testing windows. The SBA test was not available at Wilcox last Tuesday, because our district’s 11th grade SBA test window did not open until the following day,” said Elizabeth Gordon-Stoll, Assessment Coordinator of SCUSD. Specifically, the schools needed to complete 80% of their instructional teaching days to administer the test, and Wilcox had only completed 79% on the first day of testing.

The mistake was not the fault of one person, but simply a lack of communication between the district and the school and a failure to check the dates multiple times. Wilcox Vice Principal Mr. Kolda said the mishap could have been avoided with “better communication between the district and the site level as far as when to open the window.”

As a result of the issues on Tuesday, many juniors attempted to cram as much testing as they could into the second day, and some did not finish. Many students were frustrated with the pressure to complete the sections as quickly as possible, especially because the SBAC is an untimed test. “The fact that we had to cram two days worth of testing into one was impractical and irritating,” Junior Poojita Dasika commented.

The teachers were also unhappy with the waste of four hours, especially with AP testing and finals on the horizon. “I feel for the students… The reason I am concerned about it as a teacher, is all of us have been preparing our students all year, and we already know what a stressful time it is to take this,” Ms. Courey explained. “I hate to see you not only have your peace of mind disrupted as you’re taking the state exam, but then to also take away whatever final preparation time you have in all of your AP classes.”

The students who were unable to finish the test last week will be summoned to complete the test throughout the following weeks. According to Mr. Kolda, the Zipline and Intellectual Property Performance Tests must be finished by April 30th, so those students have first priority. The other portion of the test with multiple-choice questions must be completed by June 10th, so those students have an extended period of time to finish. Mr. LaFleur, an Academic Counselor at Wilcox, noted a major drawback to these make-up sessions. “The two groups that I was with were in the right frame of mind to take the test, and it’s hard to rebuild that when you’re doing a makeup session,” explained LaFleur.

A considerable amount of coordination and effort goes into the planning of these tests. “We need to remember that this is just the second year of the operational administration of the Smarter Balanced Assessment system. We are all still learning a lot about the test itself, as well as effective systems for supporting smooth administration of the assessments,” Gordon-Stoll said.

Many are concerned about how the testing confusion will impact the scores. Mr. LaFleur and other staff members are primarily concerned with the mindset students will have at a makeup session. He estimates that students’ test scores “still could be good, but we’ll see what happens.” However, Mr. Kolda remains optimistic, reminding students that “our scores were extremely high last year.”

In the future, the testing schedules will be reviewed more thoroughly before the dates are confirmed. “The Assessment Department will review each schedule for multiple required criteria, including that the tests are scheduled within the testing window.  We will provide feedback to sites to make any needed corrections in plenty of time before testing begins,” said Gordon-Stoll.

In the end, Wilcox was able to recover from the SBAC mishap, and the genuine effort exerted by the students will hopefully be reflected in the scores. Mr. Kolda concluded, “I’m proud of the school and I’m proud of the staff… This was the worse case scenario, and I think at another school, it goes a lot worse. The students and the staff are to be commended at this school, they did an amazing job. Everybody remained calm and everybody kept working and doing what they could to get it done. It’s really impressive.”