WOODBURY – Picture this: it’s your senior year, and after surviving the SATs and working tirelessly to cross off all graduation requirements, you’d think that this year would be your break. But reality hits, and now you’re dreading Nonnewaug’s most inconvenient custom — the NWEA test.
“I think the NWEA is tedious,” said NHS senior Rachel Evon. “We’ve already been taking it for three years now, not to mention, teachers already know our skills. We’re tested with them during class. Furthermore, there’s no guarantee that these skills we’re getting scrutinized for will even be applied in post secondary school or the work force, unless you plan on becoming a teacher.”
Evon’s frustrations are echoed throughout the faculty as well.
“I don’t think the NWEA should be necessary for seniors,” said NHS math faculty member Nicole Cowles. “They have already done all their pre SATs practices so, therefore, I feel like it’s more beneficial for them to focus on the courses they are taking. I feel like seniors are just done and don’t want to take [anymore] tests. Also, the NWEA would interfere with class time as they used to be administered during respective Math and English classes.”
Coincidentally, the NWEA also hinders the personal schedules of students.
“Rather than being cooped up all day in front of a Chromebook, we could’ve been at work or doing a college visit,” said Evon.
In other words – it’s a nuisance.
Seniors are always encouraged to spend any free time acquired on post secondary planning. During the PSATS, seniors were given a day off for such.
Despite the grievances of Nonnewaug seniors, the NWEA does provide schoolwide benefits.
Toby Denman, a biology teacher at NHS, sees how NWEA provides helpful data points to inform instruction.
“I think NWEA is a great way to get cumulative data on how well students are doing,” Denman said. “More students should take it seriously.”
This raises a practical point on why the NWEA is mandated, it’s not entirely pointless. Having a tangible score is a good way to measure the quality of NHS’ education, as well as how much information students are actually retaining. However, there’s still many shortcomings in this avenue.
“I think the NWEA is kind of unnecessary, ” Flora Frangu, an NHS senior, says. “Especially with the way that it’s structured. It makes you feel pressured to rush and not take time to think critically about your answers. Although I understand that the purpose is to get schoolwide data for the district, I sincerely doubt its accuracy. The questions are not formatted the same way we do class work or tests, so how can the NWEA scores be a measure of how much we learned?”
Frangu raises a significant point in how there’s a large disparity between the curriculum students learn, versus higher level testing that’s designed to trick them.
Taking the general senior opinion into account, many students wonder whether NWEA is something that will remain for years to come. Going forward, Nonnewaug does have one more round of testing this year. Typically, there are three tests a year. The English and math ones have reached their conclusion, thus, the science one should be left to be completed.
According to the NHS scheduling calendar, the spring round of NWEA is set for May 26th-May 29th.
With another round ahead, some NHS seniors have trouble mentally preparing for the spring NWEA assessment.
“There’s honestly more cons than pros in taking it,” said Evon. “However, I’m certain that Nonnewaug will come up with a replacement for it [in the future].”
