Sophomores and juniors took the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress from April 12 to 15.

According to the California Department of Education, “the primary purpose of the CAASPP System is to assist teachers, administrators, students and parents by promoting high-quality teaching and learning through the use of a variety of assessment approaches and item types.”

The CAASPP replaced the STAR test, which was discontinued in 2013. Some of the main changes include shifts to technology-based assessments and Common Core standards.

This year, the juniors took the tests on English and mathematics, while sophomores took a test on biology.

However, the technological aspect of CAASPP was met with mixed responses from students.

“I would recommend not testing on computers,” junior Rachel Hu said. “Especially for the English section, you couldn’t annotate anything and then in the math section doing calculations by clicking on buttons was really tiring.”

Junior Emily Beneduce said that while the calculator was difficult to use, the technology overall was “pretty solid.”

“I’m used to paper so I thought [the technology] was kind of random,” Beneduce said. “I don’t know if it’s better or not. I think it depends.”

Junior Rithik Kumar said he believed that the technology actually helped facilitate his test-taking experience.

“I thought it was helpful because when you’re writing your essays you can write it much faster. And it gave you a lot of flexibility when you were reviewing the test, instead of flipping back and forth,” Kumar said.

Engineering and physics teacher Ken Jones sees the shift to technology as inevitable.

“I think [the idea of technology-based assessments] is a good idea,” Jones said. “It’s probably easier to administer, it’s probably easier to score. For testing on a large scale, for standardized testing on a large scale, it’s probably a lot easier.”

Although Hu was not a fan of the technology, she still said she saw some potential for the system as long as improvements are made.

“I think it’s good because it saves paper,” Hu said. “But it’s definitely going to take some time before they find an efficient way to do it.”

Many juniors said that the test was not very difficult.

“It was easy peasy,” junior Matthew Yerich said.

According to Hu, juniors were generally apathetic toward the test itself.

“It was fairly easy. But because there was no real incentive to do it, no one really tried,” Hu said.

Biology teacher Winnie Litten said she believes that her students were prepared “above and beyond” what was expected. However, she said that the timing of the test was not ideal.

“The only problem I have is that [the test] is taken 10 weeks before the end of the year,” Litten said. “It makes the assumption that we aren’t teaching students the information that may be in the curriculum in the 10 weeks after.”

Litten explained that the CSTs for Science are still subject to change since the state is still working on including Next Generation Science Standards.

“I didn’t even know if they were going to give the test this year,” Litten said.

To take the CAASPP this year, juniors had to miss their classes.

“I had to go make up stuff 7th period and I wish teachers were more understanding about that,” Beneduce said. “Some classes, some teachers, didn’t do anything because everyone was gone, but there were some other teachers who taught like normal … It wasn’t fair to the other people who were coming back and they were confused.”

Jones said he has about a dozen juniors in his classes. Because the majority of his students are seniors, he did not change his schedule to accommodate the CAASPP dates.

“As it turned out, on the day of those [CAASPP] tests, I scheduled my own test,” Jones said. “I already moved it so I wasn’t going to move it again.”

Social sciences teacher Victor Anderson’s classes are mainly composed of juniors. Because the testing schedule was not made known to him far in advance, he did not adapt his own schedule to that of the CAASPP.

“Luckily there was no test [the] day [of the CAASPP],” Anderson said. “I would’ve just given half the class the test.”

Junior Trystan Nguyen, however, didn’t see the schedule as much of a problem.

“You only miss half your classes, so it’s not too bad,” Nguyen said.