It’s April, and for California public schools, that means STAR Testing time. This thing called “Standardized Testing And Reporting” means nothing more than two weeks of craziness as different grades are given tests in different subjects requiring a bunch of confusing schedule changes even though there’s still six weeks of classes left in the year. Crazy? You bet. Welcome to California.

Tomorrow (4/8) will be the California Language Arts Standards Test, which mostly boils down to reading stuff and answering questions about it, and then correcting badly written “student drafts.” Wednesday (4/9) will be the California Mathematics Standards Test, which is a bunch of math problems written by people who obviously AREN’T mathematicians or people having ANYTHING to do with math because of the idiotic way that at least 10-25% of their questions are written. (As someone who excels in math, when I say that the questions are worded stupidly, I know what I’m talking about.) Thursday will be the California Social Studies Standards Test (aka U.S. History), which probably is the most topical of all the tests on the plate. And then, finally, next Tuesday (4/16) will be the final STAR test: the California Science Standards Test, which is again mostly a drill & grill of science subjects. Woop dee do. And then, I get a super-late start on Wednesday (4/17) because that’s a Sophomores-only test.

The crazy thing about these tests is twofold. First of all, they really don’t say much about me, but about my school. As in, if there aren’t enough kids proficient in these tests (or even if not enough kids are there for these tests), the school gets burned on this magic number called the API. But worse, by the year 2014, if 100% of all students in the school aren’t proficient, then the school gets marked for Program Improvement (PI), a very scary thing which eventually spells doom for the future of public schools. And can you realistically expect that 100% of all students will be proficient? No. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the #1 flaw of No Child Left Behind.

The second problem is that as an assessment of my personal academic performance, these tests STINK! Math is my best subject, I got a 710 on the Math section of the SAT, and yet on the STAR tests, Math has been my lowest score for the past four years. Why? I can tell you why–all those math questions are worded so darned strangely that a good portion of them are near impossible to figure out what they’re trying to get across! I swear, there is something VERY WRONG with those tests.

Luckily, next Tuesday, I will be able to celebrate. As an eleventh grader. this is the LAST YEAR I HAVE TO TAKE THE STAR TESTS!!! After taking these tests yearly for the last ten years, I will be done with these wastes of partially-recycled paper forever! And yes, I am excited about that, and not just so that I’ll be able to get even with those rub-their-nose-in-your-face seniors who get to sleep in for five days while the rest of us are stuck with the tests.

So, here we go with a few strange days at school…

Tags: California, education, rant, schedules, School, standards, STAR, tests