To check in on the students and how the new schooling has affected their education, Carlmont administered an Interim Comprehensive Assessment (ICA) on Nov. 18.
The tests allowed educators to measure each student’s understanding of standard learning materials. It can help determine if freshman and sophomores are on track to be college and career ready and if juniors are potentially college and career ready.
“I think the ICA tests were helpful to take,” Joseph Matatyaou, a sophomore, said, “It’s needed for the state to know what the students’ intelligence is to make judgments on funding and curriculum.”
Instead of a traditional asynchronous schedule, students were given a specific time frame in which complete the ICA tests, assuming all students would follow the honor system.
English and math teachers can use the responses they get from their students to adjust any material they need to re-teach or check-in with individual students. The ICAs gives teachers a perspective on how students are doing in their class.
Some students, however, didn’t like testing from home because they were less engaged.
“It felt short and pointless,” Michelle Meskin, a sophomore, said.
Students such as Maile Firenze, a sophomore, felt it was hard to find the motivation behind these tests.
“It was ok. I felt less engaged in testing being at home,” Maile Firenze said.
Testing from home was also difficult for some students due to technical issues with the test.
“It went faster than I expected, but the math ICA didn’t show up for me that day,” Linda Lin, a sophomore, said.
While many students found that this testing was not their preference, some found themselves more fond of it than regular school tests.
“It wasn’t as bad as I thought I was gonna be, and I liked how we could do it whenever, so I wasn’t as stressed,” Sarah Nguy, a sophomore, said.
While this new at-home testing benefited some and was hard for others, there is hope that in the future there will be more ways to ensure that this new way of testing goes smoothly for the most amount of students.
