For students at Diamond Bar High School, the week of state standardized testing is closer than we think. Because the school must give students both California Standardized Testing and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, students will be required to follow a new testing schedule from late March to mid-April.

Tentatively, during the week before Spring Break, juniors will take a field SBAC, consisting of 25 questions of English Language Arts, 25 questions of Mathematics, and one Performance Task section.

After returning from Spring Break, all students except seniors will be spending at least a week of April taking standardized tests. Although the CST is optional for schools, juniors at DBHS will be required to take the ELA and Math CST’s in order to take the EAP section, which is an extra section of the standardized tests. The EAP, also known as the Early Assessment Program, is a 15 to 25 question assessment that allows juniors to skip the California State University Placement tests. All sophomores, as required by the federal government, will be taking a No Child Left Behind Science portion of the CST’s, and all freshmen will be taking a practice CAHSEE test.

The testing dates were pushed earlier this year because the CST testing window was from April 7 to May 8, while the SBAC testing window was from March 18 to April 25. Administrators wanted to have all students take the tests at the same time, but did not want to have the standardized tests interfere with the Advanced Placement testing.

Unfortunately, due to the new schedule and the new testing style, seniors will not have the week of break that usually comes with the week of CST’s. Although the exact schedule is not finalized, seniors are most likely to have only one day of late start. The schedule will be finalized by the beginning of March.