Molly Limaye ’21
Grace Haupt ’20
EA’s administration should implement more restrictions on how many tests students can have at a given time. At this article’s publication, the only limitation on testing is that students are not required to take more than two tests in a day. If a student has more than two tests on a given day, they can reschedule them to another day. However, even with this rule in place, many students still struggle with the taxation of having many tests in a week. With the school’s recent emphasis on mental health, EA should explore ways to limit the number of tests a student has in a given week.
Wenjin Sun ‘21 describes her week before mid-semester, saying, “I have five tests in two days, along with Spanish orals and quizzes in my other classes. It seems like my mid-semester grades are basically determined by these two days.”
Jocelyn Andrews ‘20 affirms that this trend is common among student schedules. She says, “[Test overloading occurs] pretty often. It seems like I never have just one test, I always have three or four. I don’t know what it is. I think it just ends up that teachers all end up scheduling them for the same couple of weeks, like the week before winter break is always really bad.”
Mike Letts, Head of Upper School, says that he does “get concerned about certain times of the school year, specifically before winter break or at mid semester when students have too many assessments.” Letts adds that during the last week of the first semester, the school tried to reduce the number of tests a student had on a given day by mandating that only two blocks could give tests. On reflection, Letts says, “I think that was helpful in some ways and in other ways it showed us some areas where we would need to be more thoughtful.” Many teachers doubled up on tests, administering one the week before the last week, along with the one on their allowed testing day during the last week. Other teachers worked around the system by assigning projects and large quizzes.
For many students, the test overloading not only occurs at the end of the semester. Many teachers seem to be on the same testing schedule, administering tests approximately every three weeks. Therefore, three weeks after the semester begins, many students have a week full of tests. Three weeks later, the test-heavy week occurs again. This testing cycle puts pressure on students to stay up late and study for days in a row, taxing their health and wellbeing.
Students have raised two ideas to help combat the problem of assessment overload. The first is an upper school testing calendar across all departments. Steve Schuh, History Department Chair, thinks a testing calendar at EA would be “a great idea.” Schuh describes the test calendar that was available at his previous school: “[W]hen [a teacher] put [his or her] tests on the calendar, it would run each student through the system and tell [teachers which students have] more than two major assessments on…[that] day.” However, a testing calendar does have its drawbacks. On the topic of a testing calendar, Andrews surmised that “teachers would still give tests in the same weeks, just on different days.” Kelly Edwards, Math Department Chair, raises another challenge, commenting, “The department chairs have discussed having a test calendar like the middle school does, but it would just be challenging to work out the logistics in terms of students in different grades being in the same classes, unlike in middle school where classes are much more specific to grade levels.”
Due to the aforementioned reasons, a testing calendar would not be useful to minimize tests in a week, but rather, as a helpful data collection tool for the administration to see trends in testing week-by-week. The testing calendar could highlight test-heavy weeks and help the administration think about solutions.
Other students propose a second idea to directly minimize test overloading. Raeleen Keffer-Scharpf ‘20 offers the idea of A and B week testing: “I think it’d be really beneficial to have testing for certain classes during ‘A weeks,’ and testing for others during ‘B weeks.’ That way, we wouldn’t have one week with six or seven tests.” For example, STEM classes would be allowed to administer tests during A week, and humanities courses could offer tests during B week. A and B week testing would also give students more time to prepare and lessen stress, helping them gain higher marks, a win-win for both students and teachers.
However, Schuh raises two important complications to this idea. He says, “I don’t know that it would necessarily work…given some winters when we have three or four or five snowdays and we tend to get behind.” However to address the snow day issue, missed classes could administer their test on their next class day, even if it goes into the next week. This should not impact students’ test overloading too much, because snow days are not very common.
Schuh explains his other issue with A/B week testing: “Particularly in AP courses, with so much content to get through, [the A and B week system] might create some very large tests, which would increase stress-levels…” For AP classes, many AP teachers plan out their courses for the entire semester or even the entire year in September, so if the administration sets the A/B week schedule in prior to the beginning of the school year, AP teachers can plan their curriculum accordingly.
Due to EA’s complex schedule, there may not be a perfect solution, but EA should prioritize the health and wellbeing of its students and use the aforementioned ideas as a starting point. To effectively address test overloading, the school should create a panel of both students and teachers to represent all sides of the issue and find the best solution for EA.