BY ALEX BARNARD
Students at Cooper City High School are facing the difficulty of dealing with several tests on the same day. With the straight seven schedule students are being tested in numerous classes on the same day. Students’ grades will greatly suffer if teachers continue to have tests on whichever day works best for their schedule. Teachers need to attempt to stagger their test scheduling to ensure that they do not interfere with the other departments.
The recent switch from the block schedule to a straight seven schedule has made the issue of multiple tests on a certain day much more drastic. The old block scheduling format allowed for a maximum of four tests on the same day, but each class having a test the same day was unlikely. The new straight seven allows up to seven tests per day, where four to five tests being given on a Friday is not out of the norm. With the new straight seven period schedule, school regulations must be put into place to ensure the students are not over encumbered with multiple tests.
Friday makes sense as the perfect day to test; it allows teachers to grade tests over the weekend and not make students attempt to study during their off time. Let’s face it; most of us study Sunday night, if even over the weekend. Trinity College of Dublin strongly recommends that we study in blocks of 45 minutes at a time and take 15 minute breaks between each. If we have five tests on a Friday we should study with six of these blocks, one for each class and one extra one for a subject we struggle with. That would be about six hours of studying, and even then we would have to study from when we got home to around nine o’clock (assuming we took no breaks longer than 15 minutes and didn’t take extra time to eat or do homework). If a student has any kind of afterschool activity they would be unable to adequately study for a majority of their classes. Students simply don’t have the time to prepare when several tests overlap upon one another.
There are several strategies that the school can implement in order to help keep tests from interfering with each other. If each type of class was assigned a day for testing, (Elective Monday, Science Tuesday, Math Wednesday, Etc.) major tests (those big tests that your core class teachers warn you about for weeks) would theoretically never conflict with one another. This method would help students devote at least one afternoon to studying for a specific subject. Holidays and teacher planning days would conflict with the schedule, so tests would need to be moved to the following day. However, this is still a better means than simply allowing teachers to schedule tests on whichever date seems to work best for their curriculum. Teachers need to understand that students cannot adequately prepare for more than 2-3 tests at once.
Even if multiple tests being given on the same day is a mere coincidence, it is still detrimental to the success of the students. Teachers must acknowledge the difficulty students have with multiple tests on a certain day and work with other departments to ensure that tests do not conflict with one another. It is both to the advantage of the students and teachers to schedule tests apart from each other. Students will gain time to really focus on each class, and teachers will see increased scores on major tests.
