Standardized testing. Two words that almost every high school student despises. When the Covid pandemic hit, students were relieved to be exempted from two school years worth of state testing. The two year hiatus came to an end as of February 2022. Now with the approval from Governor Murphy, the NJ Department of Education has passed a new policy requiring all 11th grade students in the state to take a new set of standardized tests, now known as the NJGPA assessment (New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment). With this new guideline in place, all students in the class of 2023 were now required to take these exams over the course of 4 days. The layout consisted of two days focused on English, and the other two on math skills. 

Like myself, many, if not the entire grade had a more negative attitude towards these testing schedules. With taking these tedious tests early in the morning, many juniors voiced their personal opinions on how their testing experiences went and their thoughts towards the exam’s content and questions: 

“I hated it so much. No one took into consideration that the spring musical was that week and homework did not slow down. It was not fair to our grade at all!” – Anonymous

“I thought the scheduling was annoying because we had to wake up early when other grades didn’t and the test questions were weird and didn’t really assess how much we knew”, added Ria Khanna. 

“The test itself was not too hard and I appreciated that we didn’t have much homework, but the 4 block days were really tiring!”, mentioned another student. 

“I liked having it spread out over the week, but I would rather have it condensed into a short amount of time, so we didn’t have to go to class right after we finished. That was really exhausting.” Sophie Levine agreed. 

Luckily, when it came to the actual test content, many agreed that what was assessed was pretty straightforward: “The test by itself was not that tiring. It was manageable.” Levine added. “The questions I could understand easily! I think the amount of questions were perfect” mentioned another student. 

On a much brighter note, with students having taken the state tests in March, it seems like the spring Benchmark C, which would normally follow prior LinkIt! Assessments will most likely not happen with the replacement of NJGPA! For current freshman and sophomores, it also means that this new graduation requirement is mandated for the 2024 and 2025 classes as well. With this addition to a long list of standardized tests, it looks like the NJGPA is here to stay! (For now)