Last week, eleventh-grade students were scheduled to take the much-discussed Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. However, as the week approached, more and more students decided to opt out of the test. The...

At 8:25 a.m. on Tuesday morning, a portion of the junior class sat down to their first round of SBAC while the rest congregated in the field house.  48% of Staples juniors chose to opt out of the testing. This...

As I walked into the language lab for SBAC this morning, my expectation was for it to be an easy and short standardized test. What I found was a lengthy and challenging assessment unlike the review we...

Heading into the last quarter of junior year, I was feeling pretty relieved. I kept thinking to myself “I’m almost done!” The year notorious for perpetual stress is almost done, but boy was I wrong...

Gone are the days when teachers assembled their classroom chairs into neat, distant rows so that sophomores could bubble in sheets while hoping for two things: that they would finish before time was called...

After five years of formative assessments, collaboration and funding, the first Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) testing will take place at Staples from May 26 to May 29. While the topic of...

I was fine with being in the Class of 2016 when we had to take CAPT. I didn’t mind being in the Class of 2016 when we had to write our research papers sophomore year. I was even fine with being in the...

On the night of March 9, the Westport Board of Education (BOE) convened in the Staples cafeteria to discuss various topics, such as clarifying some information regarding the Smarter Balance Assessments...

Throughout high school, there’s a kind of stigma around complaints. The seniors reserve the right to refute any complaint, having “been there, done that.” Juniors can brush the comments off due to...