SBAC testing concluded in the week after spring break with 96% of juniors taking the Math exam and 95% taking English, Assistant Principal Sean Anglon said.
A lot of students do not care about the SBAC tests very much, junior Diyaan Zinjuwadia said.
“By the time that you’re done with the first questions you’re so drained that you’re probably going to be writing whatever just to finish it,” Zinjuwadia said. “That’s what I was doing.”
The test in itself does not affect students very much, junior Sriram Sivakumar said.
“I don’t want to say make it affect your grade,” Sivakumar said. “Maybe they’ll feel incentive if you do this good, you get extra credit in this class as I feel like that would help people care more about the test.”
Some initiatives being taken by the school to make students care more about the test is making them aware that the CASP (umbrella term for SBAC and ELPAC) can be beneficial for students trying to go to a CSU or community college, Anglon said.
“So what happens is that if a student either exceeds standard or meets standard, then the CSU will allow that student to forgo their placement tests,” Anglon said. “It’s beneficial because sometimes you learn information in your junior year and when you have to take a placement test going into college, if you don’t remember, you’re kind of out of luck being in a lower class.”
SBAC scores also affect property values, Anglon said.
“On a macro level, you have the fact that CASP results affect property value,” Anglon said. “So when people see that there’s a school where the students are doing well, that increases the property value because more people want to go there.”
Each part of the 3-day SBAC test needs to hit a 95% completion rate but science only had a 92% completion rate, Anglon said.
“I don’t think we’ll have any drastic drop (in school ratings) because relatively speaking our students are on point,” Anglon said. “I don’t think there would be anything too drastic, but if we had a steep increase in the number of kids who tried to opt out, then if we don’t reach the 95% and suddenly we’re getting penalized by this and so that penalty could drastically affect our scores.”