As seniors cope with college March Madness, underclassmen at Diamond Bar High School will be going through another type of madness for standardized tests. Although juniors have already started their Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium field tests today, which will continue tomorrow, they, along with freshmen and sophomores, will have more exams to take in April.

After spring break, all students except seniors will be taking their respective standardized test on April 11. The schedule for this day will be similar to that of last year, with seniors having their one day of late start. Juniors will be taking the mathematics portion of the CST, sophomores will be taking the required life science test, and freshmen will be taking a practice California High School Exit Exam.

The following week, from April 14 to 17, will follow a new block schedule so that juniors can take the English portion of the CST. Except for zero period, which will be as normally scheduled, all class periods will be two hour blocks, and juniors will take their English CST in their English classes. This block schedule will run for four days, and the regular six-period schedule will resume on April 18.

The SBAC testing was originally scheduled to start this Monday; however, when the state announced last minute changes, administrators were forced to push back the field test to start today. Although most juniors, separated into two groups, will be testing today and tomorrow, a group of selected students will be pulled out after spring break to take the test.

To have the juniors take all the state required tests, yet not become too overwhelmed, the administrators finalized the new testing schedule considering several factors such as the number of available devices for the SBAC, instructional time lost for students, and the window of time necessary for the CST and SBAC. They also hope to find more efficient methods of testing after experimenting with the field test.

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