When you think of the SBA what is the first thing that come to your mind? “Uuuuuuuugggghhhhhh” “Noooooooooooo” “Are you serious?” are just some of the common things that people say when this SBA (Smarter Balance Assessment) becomes in session. But aren’t these reactions valid? After all, the SBA is only taken by students in Washington state. I think that every student can and is reasonable to feel this way. The SBA is a statewide test taken every year staring in third grade. It is supposed to be a measure of how much you have learned, or grown in a subject. The scores come out over the summer, and are ranked on a 1-4 scale of your understanding (1-not meeting standards and 4- exceeding standards). But what exactly makes these tests?
The test, instead of being a good way to measure how much someone has grown, ends up not being accurate to certain students; Adele Goldsworthy is an 8th grader, she says “I don’t really care that much, but its not fun and its kind of a drag”. And when asked if she feels like she gets a score every year that aligns with her understanding, she said “I find it very stressful because you’re always trying to get a better score than last year, and I feel like because you’re trying to do better it makes you do worse. “As you can see, this test cannot possibly measure how much students have grown if they get nervous or start to have anxiety on the test. These students might end up get lower scores for this unjust system when in reality, they understand most of the topics well. Just because a some students are better test takers doesn’t mean they have grown more than test takers who get anxiety on tests.
But that’s not all, the SBA can be a challenge for busy students. Students with lot of extracurriculars or challenging classes might not have time to study, or review for the SBA. They might even be in a position where they go to bed late (because they are busy) and wakes up feeling tired and not like they can display their best work. One example of a student who situation for the SBA was simply bad timing is Vaanya. Vaanya says that “The SBA adds a lot of stress and anxiety on kids who aren’t ready for it, and most of the time another thing is all the other teachers aren’t aware of this and they are giving us a lot of homework, and it kind of disrupts our testing minds. I have a lot of after school activities switching the testing activities was exhausting and I felt drained and like it was very challenging to switch mindsets all the time.”, As you can see Vaanya isn’t a bad student, she simply had a busy schedule. After all, she isn’t in the wrong, we shouldn’t have to plan our lives around a test that cannot measure growth well without proper preparation. If Washington state really wanted to measure the students growth, they should be monitoring the entire year, not just one week where a student could be going through a problem and might not preform the best.
In conclusion, the students of Washington state should not have to go under the stress and pressure and try to work so hard for a test that is unfair to so many of it’s students. Why should we have to work so hard for a number score that measures our learning throughout a whole year in 2-3 days. That simply doesn’t seem fair to people going through so many things, especially teens since our lives are always changing. The long and tedious test ought to be named the Super Boring Assessment (instead of Smarter Balanced Assessment) for all the unfairness in the system, at least the name should be accurate!
