Every fall, students from freshman to junior year take the PSAT, which is a standardized test that helps students prepare for when they take the SAT in their junior or senior year. When it was announced that District 219 schools would be administering their PSAT and SAT tests online, I thought this would be a hot mess. As said in an email put out by Assistant Principal, Steve Parnther, the test being online would provide an overall easier testing experience for the students, but I think this will provide the exact opposite.
For starters, in preparation for taking the tests online, we had a Digital Readiness Check in homeroom on Tuesday, September 19. This extended homeroom meeting helped students set up their Chromebooks for taking the test and become familiar with the applications, so when it comes to the day of the test there should be no confusion, right? The first thing that went wrong that day was that administrators were supposed to go to every homeroom and give each student a slip with their passcode information on it, but for most classrooms, the students didn’t get their slips until much later into homeroom. After a while, this became very disorganized, so the administration sent out a spreadsheet with everyone’s codes on it digitally, which did not help the cause. This provided an overall stressful experience for teachers and students.
Another issue I have with the online PSAT resides more in its format. When a test, not only the PSAT, is on paper, it is easier for some students to read and absorb information than if they were to read something online. When I read something online I find it difficult to fully understand the information compared to reading it on paper. After reading a sentence for the tenth time on a computer to try to grasp some understanding of it, I already have a headache.
Many students might think that this is a good thing to have the test online because it will be easier to keep track of people’s names, make sure everyone has a test and not have papers floating around your desk. While these may be pros to the online version of the PSAT, the technology problems that may arise because of this format, will even out the pros.
One solution to this problem is making online optional, where students have the option to take the test on paper or online. While problems may arise by having separate tests on two different formats, I think this is important to give students the choice because they might work better with one method, or they have a learning disability in which the format of the test would affect their ability to do well.
