All Orange County Public Schools will participate in a testing infrastructure trial today. There will be on a modified bell schedule to accommodate for the testing block. Each class will be shortened to make up for a 50-minute trial that will be between first and second period.
“[As a teacher,] I see the county doing this as a positive for students. I think students need as few problem on the testing day as possible. We don’t want a bunch of problems that will put the whole room behind and stress teachers and students out,” reading teacher Melissa Barker said.
Students will stay in their first period class to test. Depending on their building, students will be testing either the FSA or Pearson testing platforms. Buildings 300, 600, 700, 900, 1000, 1300 and the portables will be testing the FSA platform. While buildings 200, 500, 800 and 1100 will test the Pearson platform.
OCPS wants to make sure that all students are able to access the testing platforms at the same time.
“We need to see if there are any problems with the whole county logging on at the same time. And if there are problems then we have two months to fix it, but also to eliminate errors on the testing day,” testing coordinator Christina Hedke said.