Once again, the Camas High School schedule will blow up for Smarter Balanced testing — this time for sophomores to test in math. Earlier in April, students had a week of block scheduling for English testing, and now it is time to do it again: long classes for students, long classes to plan for the teachers, and a general discombobulation for the whole campus.
Although this schedule is primarily meant to accommodate sophomores, administrators decided to run this schedule because it is the most beneficial to all the people attending Camas High School. Other students, who are not taking the test, will still be able to finish their own classwork, if not more since the class periods in total are one hour and fifty minutes.
The school believed this schedule would be the best for all the students. Other options for the testing week were that “…we could have done like what we did last year which was the normal school day. The students tested for about fifty minutes at a time then stopped and started over again they did that for three to five days….” Associate Principal Mr. Sanford explains. This option didn’t seem to benefit other staff and students due to the repetition during those few days.
Another option that was placed on the table was “…we take over the gym, North Commons and upper gym to test in massive space while everyone else is going to class as normal, but I didn’t want to take the PE classes, because it’s their classroom so we try to avoid that as much as possible.” Sanford states. As mentioned by Sanford, this option would take over classrooms of other teachers, not to mention cramming 300-400 students into these said rooms.
This schedule was made to involve and benefit everyone: the students, teachers and other staff members. Due to having this new routine, the people attending CHS will have longer periods to finish up their tests, for sophomores, and to finish any other assignments for the other grade levels. “… it would have impacted those students [test takers] because they would have missed work since class is continuing as normal and now we’re able to test in English classes,” Sanford explains.
