Administration prepares for Common Core testing

By Parnia Mazhar
Staff Writer

Costa juniors will take state-wide testing from May 14-21, created by Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium to align with California’s newly adopted Common Core Standards.

Common Core are standards that works toward the implementation of standardized teaching all across the United States. All public high school juniors in schools affiliated with Common Core take a test which covers both mathematics and English language arts.

“Common Core is an important assessment that ideally prepares students for college,” Vice Principal Marianne Ramos said.

During this testing, the administration will place juniors within three groups that will rotate for testing two days at a time. As only one of three group can test from 8 a.m. to 12:40 p.m., the rest of the junior class will attend their regular classes. Seniors, sophomores and freshmen schedules will not be affected by the testing.

“When picking the Common Core schedule, we wanted to maximize the number of students going through the test while minimizing the number of disruptions in the student’s school day,” Ramos said.

Since the Common Core test is computer based, students will take the assessments on the computers provided in Costa’s computer labs in the math and science building.

Prior to the testing, junior English teachers are able to practice test taking with their classes to give their students time to prepare for the official test.

“Common Core will be a learning process for the teachers as well as the students,” math teacher Linda Gesualdi said. “Teachers have begun preparing this year, but I think it will take a couple of years to fully implement all of the changes.”